The no-spin, honest-to-goodness $64,000 question:

Then-businessman Donald Trump with Russian oligarch (and close Putin ally) Aras Agalarov (R) and his son, Emin (L).  Sberbank is a state-owned bank and the largest in Russia, and Crocus is Agalarov's real estate development company.

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Do the Russians have compromising information on Donald Trump, either through his past business dealings with Russian oligarchs, or through election collusion, enough to blackmail him?  Have the Russians entrapped President Donald Trump?

THAT is what the Mueller Trump/Russia investigation is about.  Period.  Hillary's emails and DNC rigging against Bernie Sanders, etc, are legitimate questions that can be addressed in some other venue.

President Trump thinks the investigation is an effort to deprive him of his legitimate election.  Republicans think it's an effort to remove him from office, which they oppose as they think he's a political novice they can manipulate.  Democrats want to discredit Trump/Republicans so they can regain power for themselves.  They all have their own near-sighted selfish agendas....and they've all missed the point.

Even White House Counsel Don McGahn missed the blackmail point at first.  He once asked the Acting Attorney General why the FBI cared if one administration official (National Security Director Mike Flynn) lied to another (VP Mike Pence)?  She had to explain to him that Flynn had publicly stated he hadn't discussed sanctions with Russians (a really big deal) when the FBI had proof he had.  And of course the Russians knew he had, too.  

At any time of the Russian's choosing they could have blackmailed Flynn, threatening to unmask him as the Benedict Arnold of the 21st Century if he didn't cooperate and give them what they wanted.  RUSSIA WOULD THEN HAVE A SPY IN THE INNER CIRCLE OF THE WHITE HOUSE!

The exact same thing could happen with President Trump.  The Russians have their eyes on all high-profile Americans who visit Russia and/or do business with Russians.  They've been watching Trump for decades.  Russian oligarchs, all friendly with Vladimir Putin, have done business with him.  Trump has been used, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not, to launder their money.  They've financed some of his hundreds of business ventures, primarily run through suspect Cypriot and German banks.  Now all of a sudden he just might become the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!  HOLY CRAP!  The incentive was surely there for Russia to want to see him elected, hence entrapping collusion.

Everything else is just a smoke screen.  The ONLY thing that matters is to find out once and for all if President Donald Trump is subject to being blackmailed.

Our national security demands that we have a President who is beyond ever being cornered in a compromising position. Those amateurs who say Trump is or isn't susceptible are just thinking wishfully based on their own prejudices.   We need to know if President Trump passes muster.  This is why it's imperative for Robert Mueller to finish his investigation.

S

Exactly who is serving who here?

Many, many years ago when they thought I was too naive to catch on, they (one of our political parties) wanted me as one of their Precinct Chairmen.  They asked if I would accept, and I in return asked, "What exactly will I have to do?"  They explained I would need to knock on my neighbor's doors and ask for their vote, pass out literature, put campaign signs in lawns, host fundraisers for local party candidates, and just in general pledge my loyalty and support for all the candidates the party puts forward.  

"But what if I don't like the candidate you put forward?  What if I for some reason find your / our candidate to be unworthy of my and my neighbor's vote?  Do I still have to support him?"

They said, "yes", and I said "no thanks".

That, on a far grander scale, is what we're seeing in Washington right now.  Republicans seem to be honoring their loyalty pledge to their fellow party member, without reservation.  Every single intelligence agency head has publicly stated the Russians actively interfered in our recent election, but President Trump just gives it a "maybe".  "It might have been the Russians, or maybe someone else" he says.  "Who knows?"

Congressional Republicans almost uniformly say, "Yeah, well probably, I guess, but I'm not sure."  Why can't they put party aside and say, "Yes the Russians interfered, and I don't like it one damn bit!"  But they don't.  They just give President Trump a pass, who in turn will likely not even bring the matter up with Russian President Putin when they meet tomorrow at the G-20 summit.  Everyone is just tip-toeing around this little Russian bully.  Is Washington now a "Backbone Free Zone"?

So the party....either party....is now more important than our nation's sovereignty and security?  Unless they speak up boldly, now, I'll have to conclude their answer is "yes".  That's their dirty little secret.  To them the party is more important than The People they serve.

And that's why I will never be a member of either the Republican or Democratic Party.  My loyalty will never be given cart blanche to either party, ever. 

S

Our unraveling world

Let me just throw out some random observations regarding what's going on in the world today and then let you connect the dots:

Donald Trump campaigned on "America First", and for better or worse, he's delivering on it.  Among his demands is that NATO members should start pulling their weight financially.  They had previously agreed to each spend 2% of their GDP on defense, collectively strengthening NATO, but so far all but the US, Greece, the UK, Poland, and Estonia have reneged.  The German Foreign Minister recently said it was "quite unreasonable to believe Germany would spend 2% of its economic output on the military."

Last year the United Kingdom voted to separate themselves from the European Union, aka Brexit.  And now Scotland is again making noises about separating itself from the UK.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French National Front Party, who vows to follow the UK's Brexit lead and get France out of the EU (Frexit?), is on the short list to become the next President of France.  She also says she will strengthen French relations with Russia.   

Speaking of:  The Russia of Vladimir Putin is punching above its weight class.  It's expanding militarily, although still for now exhibiting more bluster than true power.  At home it's an economic basket case, but Putin still has visions of Russia regaining the glory and prestige it had back in the days of the old Soviet Union.  They meddled in the recent US election (fact), and right now are meddling in the upcoming elections of France and Germany.  Their cyber-warfare capabilities are immense and expanding, and we don't seem (?) to have a way to counter them.

Russia is leaning heavily on some of their former Soviet Republic neighbors, occupying Crimea, and now actively stirring things up in the Balkans (south-eastern Europe).  Meanwhile, back at home, the Putin regime is under pressure to reform, which he isn't about to let happen.  Although it's seldom reported in the press, there is considerable public discontent with Putin.  And what often happens when a leader wants to deflect attention away from discontent at home?

The leader of Turkey, Recip Erdogan, an avowed Islamist, is consolidating power, slowly but surely dismantling the secular state established there after WWI.  He is rapidly filling the power vacuum left by crumbling neighbors Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and others.   Turkey is a long-time member of NATO (another eventual nail in NATO's coffin?) , but not a member of the European Union. (They applied, but so far have been rebuffed).

North Korea is perfecting their nuclear arms at a steady pace.  So far no one has been able to convince them to cease and desist, not even their benefactor communist neighbor, China.  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has shown nothing but contempt for the rest of the world and seems hellbent on seating himself at the Big Table with the major powers.  He doesn't seem frightened by the concept of "Mutually Assured Destruction", which for 40 years kept the US and the USSR from attacking each other.  We don't seem to have any feasible way to dissuade North Korea.

The United States, traditionally the most stable country in the world, is still stable, but feeling some tremors.  We need some truly dependable allies, but they seem to be few and far between (see above).

Our climate is changing.  It's getting warmer almost everywhere.  Whether this is due to natural cycles or man-made factors, who knows?  But instead of playing it safe and being pro-active, we're looking the other way and just chasing the Almighty $$$.

Folks, we need to get our shit together.  Look back through history and you'll see we've been in hellacious messes before and gotten ourselves out, and we can now, too, assuming it's part of God's Grand Plan.  But just like in those past situations there will be a serious price to pay.  

The soft life we've been living for many generations may be coming to an end, which actually isn't a bad thing.  To eventually prevail we'll need to stop thinking in terms of "me, me, me" and start thinking of the common good for a change.

And as a personal request, can we please get all this worked out before next football season?  *wink*  

S
aka Chuckles :)

America's Chief Incoherence Officer

"So today I'll be up here, but then tomorrow I'll be over there.  Everybody got that?"....said President Donald Trump at his first Cabinet meeting. 

You know how most organizations have a Chief Executive Officer, a Chief Financial Officer, a Chief Technical Officer, etc?  Our government apparently doesn't work like that.  Instead we have a Chief Incoherence Officer, and then a bunch of confused underlings running around the world wondering what the boss is going to say next. 

This week was a good example of that with VP Pence, Sec Defense Mattis, and Sec State Tillerson all in Europe to reassure our allies there, and NATO, that we are solidly with them, just like we have been since we all kicked Hitler to the curb back in '45.   But....DOH!....then our Chief Incoherence Officer (CIO), aka President Donald Trump, piped in by saying they'd better pay up or we're outta there.

And just yesterday our CIO told a room full of influential conservatives that he was going to whip up on those %^&^* errant Muslims, and hours later his National Security Adviser, Lt. Gen. McMaster, came along behind him and said the boss was....ummm.... just having a bad day.  *ahem*

Our CIO also told the crowd our program to expel Mexican illegals was a "military operation", but then his Sec of Homeland Security, a 4-Star Marine General (Ret), had to step up and say no, it was NOT a military operation.  Wha....what?

The only person who seems to be operating on the same wave length as the President is his Senior White House Adviser, Steve Bannon.  Not long ago I wondered aloud if Bannon was Trump's Rasputin?  (Grigori Rasputin was the glassy-eyed mystic/healer who became a favored adviser of the last Russian Czar after convincing him he could heal his seriously hemophiliac son.  He didn't, and his political advice reeked, too.)

Wanna hear an eerie coincidence?  I heard someone on TV recently say Steve Bannon's style was straight out of the playbook of Aleksandr Dugin, so I looked Dugin up and this is what I found:

Aleksandr Dugin

Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin is a Russian political scientist known for his fascist views who calls to hasten the "end of times" with all out war.  Wikipedia

Essentially Dugin says push, coerce, intimidate, and if it takes a war in order to prevail, so be it.  A nuclear war isn't unthinkable.

And speaking of Russia, what's the deal with Trump's bro-mance with Russia / Putin?  When all our intel guys say they caught the Rooskies red handed meddling in our election, why does Trump just shuffle his feet and yell SQUIRREL?   

Why did Trump's man Flynn tell the Russian Ambassador to not worry about the sanctions we've placed on them?  First Flynn said he didn't say it, then admitted he did and was fired for it.  Now that's a scandal all by itself.  Why have Republicans so far tip-toed around investigating any of this?  (One Congressman lamely said an investigation would take up too much congressional "band width".  HUH?)  Why did Reince Priebus (Trump's Chief of Staff) ask the FBI to say it was no big deal?  Maybe it wasn't, we don't know, but there sure is a lot of smoke.  Something smells!

And just coincidentally, still speaking of Mother Russia, here are a few interesting facts:  Russians are seriously underperforming thinkers.  Russian's share of international patent applications is just two-tenth's of 1%, despite having 2% of the world's population and 5% of the world's college graduates.

Also, due to widespread excessive smoking and drinking, the life expectancy of the average Russian today is just 64, with a 15-year-old Russian boy having a life expectancy 3 years less than his counterpart in Haiti.   Haiti!  (Source: Forbes)

Yeah boy....we really should pal around more with those cool Russians.  Good guys to suck up to, Mr. Bannon.  *NOT*

S

Death by hanging, or death by firing squad?

 Just my two cents, which actually has no cash value at all....

  
Of course the O'Bama administration is touting the new Iran / 5+1 (or whatever it's called) nuclear freeze deal, and now our living rooms are being blasted with TV commercials saying it will be the end of the world and we must stop it.  So who's right?

IMHO both are.  There is no way we are going to get (our definition of) a good deal with the Iranians.  They are led by religious zealots who don't care what the world or even their own people want.  Oh sure, they trotted out the guy with the neatly trimmed facial hair and a suit of western-style clothes to be their front man....

....but it's really this guy, their Grand Exalted PooBah, who holds the real power, and he has said the agreement will in no way alter his determination to destroy Israel or deter him from spreading his pro-Shia Muslim influence across the Mid East.  I don't trust him, or the rest of the Gubment of Iran, and look for them to cheat every chance they get. 

They'll get the world's sanctions off their backs, get the go-ahead to buy critical "stuff" from the West, then they'll be off to their old shenanigans again.  (Before the ink even dried they announced a deal with Pootie Poo Putin to buy 100 Ilyushin aerial-refueling tankers, enabling their shitty little air force to extend their range to cover virtually the entire Mid East.)

BUT....

Let's get real here....we can't stop them.  With regard to this particular crisis, we're essentially powerless.  Sure, sanction hurt them, or more specifically hurt their people, but the religious zealots who call the shots there haven't cared about their people in decades.  Why start now?  

A few years down the road this will surely look like it was a bad deal.  But at least on paper it bought us some time.  Time to figure out what to do.  Time to develop some miracle new technology that can zap their nukes, or scramble their computers with some new computer virus.  I dunno.  Anything is possible.

So I guess we should take the deal, but NEVER let ourselves think this will be the peaceful end of those pesky old Iranians.  Like your slug of a brother-in-law, they'll be back.  Count on it.  *sigh*

Fortunately (?) for us, the Egyptians, Turks, and Saudis, and of course the always vigilant Israelis are making noises like they might step to the plate and do something.  'Course, if they succeed, what will be the unintended consequences from those odd bedfellows?

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On a totally unrelated (believe it or not) topic, this evening I'm going to the gun club to shoot this:

You know what they say about men and their toys.  :)

Now where did I put my tin foil hat?

S