Third trump Indictment the Charm, And Still More To Come

Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
-- Matthew 7:7 

Well, I demanded indictments and BY GOD Special Counsel Jack Smith delivered with regards to trump's involvement in the January 6th Insurrection. Via Dareh Gregorian and Ryan J. Reilly at NBC News:

Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday on charges he conspired to defraud the country he used to lead and attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power to Joe Biden. 

“The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the government function by which those results are collected, counted and certified,” the indictment from special counsel Jack Smith’s office says. 

The indictment marks a historic moment for a nation less than 250 years old — the first time a former president has faced criminal charges for trying to overturn the bedrock of democracy, a free and fair election. While Trump's failure to reverse his defeat was a credit to the guardrails of that democracy, the ability to prosecute him may renew the stress test on the constitutional design.

The allegation that Trump used "dishonesty, fraud, and deceit" to subvert the 2020 election with "pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud" comes after a sprawling investigation that included testimony from dozens of White House aides and advisors ranging in seniority up to former Vice President Mike Pence.

The indictment accuses Trump of taking part in three criminal conspiracies: "to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud and deceit" to obstruct the electoral vote process; to "impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified;" and "against the right to vote and to have that vote counted."

There is a link to the indictments provided here.

I would like to refer to Emptywheel for her legal expertise, but she's only posted a quick review and promises to have more later (and gives us clues as to who the yet-indicted co-conspirators are):

It’s late here, so this may be my only analysis before you all wake up.

But I wanted to lay out the structure of the Trump indictment.

The indictment charges him, alone, with four crimes:

18 USC 371 (conspiracy to defraud the US)

18 USC  1512(k) (conspiracy to obstruct the vote certification)

18 USC 1512(c)(2) (obstructing the vote certification)

18 USC 241 (conspiracy to violate civil rights)

They all are entirely overlapping. That is, Trump’s conduct, and those of 6 alleged co-conspirators, is cited in all those charges.

These are four charges for the same crime. So if the DC Circuit or SCOTUS overturns how DOJ has applied 1512, there are two back stops.

The other most important part of this indictment is who is named as a co-conspirator (and who might well be charged, as far as we know, today, separately by sealed indictment):

• Co-Conspirator 1, an attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not. (Rudy Giuliani)
• Co-Conspirator 2, an attorney who devise and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election. (John Eastman)
• Co-Conspirator 3, an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the Defendant privately acknowledged to others sounded “crazy.” Nevertheless, the Defendant embraced and publicly amplified Co-Conspirator 3’s disinformation. (Sidney Powell)
• Co-Conspirator 4, a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and who, with the Defendant, attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud. (Jeffrey Clark)
• Co-Conspirator 5, an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding. (WaPo says this is Kenneth Chesebro, and I think that’s sound.)
• Co-Conspirator 6, a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding. (Note: Emptywheel doesn't speculate but others are thinking it's Boris Epshteyn)

I argued since April 2022 that DOJ could — and should — charge Trump first and build in the stuff around him. I reiterated that a few weeks ago.

There’s a lot here...

One thing I would note is how Jack Smith spelled out more indictments are coming, not just for the conspirators but that trump is still on the hook for other matters the grand jury haven't voted on yet. For example, there's charges related to the Fake Electors scheme that Conspirator Number 6 oversaw that haven't been directly indicted yet (possibly waiting for Georgia's indictments on their Fake Electors to set up the charges for that state and several others).

Why these charges matter is that Smith presents as a legal matter before the courts strong evidence that donald trump has been - still is - lying about the 2020 election results, and using those lies to conspire against the Constitution and the United States and the People it represents.

Throughout the indictments, time and again Smith and his team point out where trump had been told the election results were fair, there was no proof of stolen or faked ballots, and yet trump still schemed to undo those results. Worse, trump and his co-conspirators were planning out ways to disrupt the formalities of our electoral system through means of violence: First towards trump's own Vice President Pence and towards Congress, and then violence towards any Americans who would rise up in protest against trump's coup attempt.

For all of trump's screaming that these indictments are a "WITCH HUNT", for the love of God the whole world witnessed what happened on January 6th when trump's rally turned into a riot that smashed into the halls of the Capitol. There's been hundreds of court cases that convicted - or forced plea deals - almost half of the trumpian MAGA rioters by now. There's been two-plus years of Congressional hearings and grand jury inquiries into trump's misconduct that presented enough evidence that the Justice Department can now take to trial.

We've seen real witch hunts, by the by: Far Right Republican pursuits after Bill Clinton in the 1990s that only uncovered adulterous affairs that had nothing to do with financial or political crimes; Far Right Republican allegations against Obama for everything they feared but could never prove; Far Right Republican attacks on Hillary's handling of Benghazi and her emails, which all turned into nothingburgers that could never stand up in a court of law.

We've never been in a moment like this, with a former President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) facing criminal charges for attacking constitutional norms and in most respects the nation itself. All because we've never had as blatant a con artist and would-be mafia boss like trump reach that level of power before.

Gods help us, our nation needs this moment to force trump into the crucible of a courtroom, to face the reality of the schemes he's plotted and the sins he's committed. Anything to stop him from his constant Big Lies that have brought us to this place. Anything to stop him before he can lie and bully his way back into the Presidency where the law will be impotent to hold him accountable (ever again, if he gets his wish of dismantling every federal system to stay in power for the rest of his aging life).

Let Justice be done. For everything that the United States represents in the long arc of human history.

The Conspiracy Proved, trumpian Rot Exposed. Keep Going, Justice Department

Didn't plan on blogging much this week, but this news dropped about the ongoing trials for the trumpian insurrectionists who rioted on January 6 2021, especially one of the big fish to get caught (via Carrie Johnson at NPR): 

Former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and three other members of the far-right Proud Boys group have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy by a federal jury in Washington, D.C.

Jurors also convicted Tarrio and the others of obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties, obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder and destruction of government property with value of over $1,000 in one of the most important cases to date stemming from the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021...

The convictions amount to a significant victory for the Justice Department, which has now secured them against top leaders of both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers for their roles in the attempt to keep former President Trump in power and stop certification of the 2020 election...

The sprawling case included 500,000 chat messages, video clips, podcasts and even a police riot shield. FBI special agents, police on the front lines on January 6, and former members of the Proud Boys who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors made up the bulk of the Justice Department witness list...

As the then-leader of one of the more militant extremist groups in open support of donald trump's reign of terror, Tarrio is a big piece of the overall puzzle that makes up trump's efforts to overturn the legitimate election results of 2020.

trump regularly associated himself, through speech and through public appearances at his non-stop rallies, to the Proud Boys and a number of videos/photos show Tarrio in close proximity to trump at several of those events. Tarrio himself emphasized his ties to trump to bolster membership and stoke his followers into acts of protests, and as proved in today's jury decisions incited them to riot on trump's behalf.

There hasn't been a lot of evidence - at least not shown at this trial or any of the other Proud Boy and Oath Keeper trials that also found Guilty verdicts to most of the insurrectionists - of any direct ties between Tarrio and trump when it came to the planning and execution of the January 6th riot.

But there's a shit-ton of evidence linking Tarrio and his Proud Boys to Roger Stone. There's a shit-ton of evidence - some of it from Stone's own documentarians - that Stone was heavily involved in the planning and arguably evidence of him managing it from his war room that day.

And Stone is practically tied to trump by the hip.

With Tarrio's case proved - that Seditious Conspiracy on January 6th did take place - there's standing here to follow through on the conspiracy angle and go after everyone linked to Tarrio that day.

Tarrio gets you Roger Stone.

Roger Stone gets you trump.

Let justice be done.

One Sentence About My Thoughts Regarding Jeffrey Epstein's Death in Jail

For starters I'm not buying the suicide report because he'd already tried something like this earlier and for the love of GOD should have been under 24/7 suicide watch just to make sure nobody tried to shiv him, because Jeffrey Epstein's career as a Pedophile Pimp for an exclusive club of billionaire greed-heads and political figures - a list including the Shitgibbon himself, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew from the UK (!) - along with growing evidence Epstein was involved in human trafficking across the globe made him a high risk for certain powerful figures who would risk Epstein's death in jail and withstand the coming public outcry against such an obvious conspiratorial move by fearing the possibility of Epstein exposing global diabolical criminal activities, and so I call on the New York District Attorneys investigating Epstein and his Circle of Carnal Crime to keep digging and arrest every child-fucker and human slaver they can find. Gasp. Shit, that's two sentences. SHIT, THAT'S... okay you get my gist.

Four For the Fourth 2019 Part WHAT THE FOURTH IS THIS SH-T!

I really don't want to go spreading wild rumors, so for starters I don't believe a word of this. However, this craziness is out there and requires an impartial and professional review.

To wit: There are a bunch of crazy-ass QAnon trumpsters who believe John-John, AKA John Kennedy Jr., the Prince That Was Promised sex symbol of the 1990s, faked his death in 1999, spent the last twenty years hiding in Pittsburgh, and has turned into an avid trump supporter who is willing to go public this 4th of July to sign up as trump's 2020 Veep running mate.

...

I CANNOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP. I may write as a hobby and get a few things published here and there, but JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST I cannot delve into this level of the absurd. Here's Rolling Stone's EJ Dickson's take on it:

On this scientific scale, John F. Kennedy Jr. falls somewhere in between Judy Garland and former Minnesota Twins center fielder Kirby Puckett; all of which is to say, he is extremely, irrefutably dead. In July 1999, the pulchritudinous son of John and Jackie Kennedy and cofounder of George magazine perished in a tragic plane crash at the age of 38, along with his wife Carolyn Bessette and his sister-in-law Lauren. At least, this is the conventional narrative perpetuated by the fake news media, according to supporters of the pro-Trump conspiracy theory QAnon. Hardcore Q believers think that JFK Jr. is not only alive and well, but also that he plans to emerge from his 20-year hiatus from public life by coming out and supporting Trump as his running mate in 2020. Moreover, they believe that a guy in Pittsburgh named Vincent Fusca is actually JFK Jr. in disguise, and they have made T-shirts promoting this belief...

The theory that JFK Jr. is alive and a Trump supporter and a hirsute former financial services professional who lives in Pittsburgh has been percolating in QAnon forums for at least the past year. But it recently made a resurgence on YouTube, where QAnon supporters are posting tutorials for how to make JFK Jr. face masks to wear to Trump’s much-hyped July 4th rally, when they believe JFK Jr. will finally emerge from hiding. The goal of the masks, according to Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer, is for believers to be able to easily identify other QAnon supporters (though, frankly, this seems unlikely, as the shock of seeing a long-dead celebrity casually walking around Washington would almost certainly inspire mass fear and panic in the streets)...

To be fair, not every Q believer buys into the idea that JFK Jr. staged his own death and is secretly posing as a Trump supporter from Pittsburgh. But the belief has gained enough traction among Q supporters that it’s worth engaging seriously with how such beliefs spread, and why they gain acceptance in some circles...

The world of a Conspiracy believer - a Truther, a Birther, any of them - from Salem Witches to Jim Crow race-baiters to Turner Diary readers is all based on a belief that the world is crap (which is half-true) but that it's crap for a reason (The conspiracies that the wingnuts KNOW exist, depending on their own racial and religious hatreds) and that the Conspiracy Theorist alone (even among the thousands of others) is the one truthteller setting the world free.

In short, ego-driven fantasies that they will rise up and the rest of us will fall or show adoration.

This is similar to those End Times believers: The innate desire to rise above the mundane world through mystery and tragedy and cosmic forces beyond our ken. They are just as disdainful of the facts and just as eager to see the world end just to prove themselves correct. It's mostly sad, except for the poor souls who drive themselves to self-harm or violence because of it.

There's entire books on how the United States is prone - and vulnerable - to wild accusations and troubling groupthink. This is just one more crazy plot line in a crazy and dark timeline our nation has to endure.

Look, I personally believe - or want to believe - that Elvis and Freddie Mercury are both alive, having achieved immortality and riding across the United States solving crimes. But that's just the whimsy in me. I know they're dead, I know this world is not fantasy, and besides I have no idea which bike either of them had a preference for (I'm thinking Triumphs, but that's actually Dylan's preferred ride).

Elvis is dead, people. John-John too. Just focus on solving the problems of the real world, okay?

It Will Open The Whole Thing (w/ Update)

This is some serious shit (via Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier at Buzzfeed News):

President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.

Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit Russia during the presidential campaign, in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jump-start the tower negotiations. “Make it happen,” the sources said Trump told Cohen.

And even as Trump told the public he had no business deals with Russia, the sources said Trump and his children Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. received regular, detailed updates about the real estate development from Cohen, whom they put in charge of the project...

If we go by this consideration from Aaron Blake at the Washington Post:

If Robert S. Mueller III has the evidence he reportedly has — that Trump asked Michael Cohen to lie to Congress for him — it could present something that’s been missing thus far from the public domain: An event so cut-and-dried that even Republicans would be hard-pressed not to consider impeachment.

BuzzFeed News broke the story Thursday night about the alleged Trump request. The lie Cohen told is the one he has pleaded guilty to: about when efforts to secure a Trump Tower Moscow concluded. BuzzFeed reports that not only did Cohen tell Mueller’s team that Trump told him to lie, but that Mueller had evidence of this even before confronting Cohen...

That would explain how Mueller got Cohen to flip so quickly. Back to Blake:

There are important caveats here — and the story is of such significance that we need to emphasize those caveats up high. The first is that it is based upon two anonymous “federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.” The second is that Cohen’s team isn’t confirming it, despite his having flipped on Trump long ago. We also don’t know exactly what evidence Mueller has. The solidity of that evidence matters greatly in what would otherwise be a he-said, he-said situation.

But judging by the report, it sounds like Mueller just might have the goods. The key graph:

The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.

That sure sounds like a lot of evidence...

Agreed. All it took for Watergate to turn into Nixon's downfall was one audio recording of Nixon giving orders to interfere with the FBI's investigation of the break-in. If there's one verifiable email, one audio clip of trump doing exactly that - and Cohen is known for recording a lot of his conversations - and the Shitgibbon is caught dead to rights Suborning Perjury and committing Obstruction.

And I'm with Blake, so far this is just a report, without a lot of paperwork of its own to back it up. Until Mueller's investigators go public with what they have, this is still conjecture.

But it sure as hell puts in place one huge piece of the jigsaw puzzle. It explains why Cohen's office and personal abodes were raided with warrants specifying specific items (audio recordings). It explains why Cohen flipped faster than most other trump insiders like Flynn and Manafort (and Manafort still hasn't really flipped yet, which only tells us how deep in debt he is to Putin and Russia...).

It explains why trump hasn't shut the whole thing down like he's threatened to. Mueller probably already has something too big to hide, and closing his investigation will likely let that go public in the worst way.

It's just a question of when it all comes out. I hope to God it's soon. I hope to God it means a Presidential campaign of 2020 free of trump's malign presence.

I hope to God this is finally it.

Update: Mueller's Special Counsel office issued an official statement, disputing the Buzzfeed article. They don't go specifically into what was wrong within the article, but the statement notes the "characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Cohen's Congressional testimony are not accurate."

This could mean several things: the article itself was a screwup, relying on sources who were not in the know; the sources lied to rattle the Mueller investigation into making public statements before ready; or the details obtained were real but improperly interpreted. It is unlikely Mueller is blowing smoke here, so he and his office are pissed about something being wrong in the story.

One thing to note, most media outlets tend to run such stories - reporting on serious criminal matters involving political figures - by their Legal departments to make sure they didn't overstep or enter into Libel/Slander territories, so it's not likely the reporters made this all up. It's a question now of how well-vetted the story is. If I were Buzzfeed, I'd be questioning my sources under harsh scrutiny to find out what's not right.

The Fredo-In-Chief Wants You To Know He's Smaht Not Dumb Like Everybody Says

I know a guy...walks into a bank with a bottle, tells everybody it's nitroglycerin. He scores some cash off of the teller. On his way out, he drops the bottle. It cracks on the floor. He slips in it. He smacks up his head. They get him. The nitroglycerin was canola oil. I know more fucked-up bank robbers than ones that know what they're doing. I doubt one in ten could tell you where the dye pack is. Most bank robbers are fucking morons. 

-- Jack Foley, from Out of Sight

(And yes, that's not a typo in the headline: it's common practice to spell out the accent used when quoting a movie, and that's how the late great John Cazale said it)

We never accused donald j. trump of being intelligent, or smart. Clever, probably, you don't get to figure out how to con people out millions of dollars if you didn't have some skill set. Devious always, and bullying and short-sighted that's pretty fucking obvious.

But as you look more and more at this criminal organization known as the trump Empire, the more you see a mafia-esque group of wannabes who all play at being Michael Corleone but all turn out to be an army of Fredos. It becomes less "How did these morans trick so many people into voting for them?" and more "No wonder they got help from Russia to cheat their way into the White House."

Because that's where the Fredo-in-Chief trump is going with his ongoing ragefest on Twitter to cover up his crimes. Just this morning, in fact, link provided to Digby's Hullabaloo site:

Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!
8:35 AM - Aug 5, 2018

Where trump gets a few things wrong:

1) he'd already tried to cover for that June 2016 meeting between donald junior and Russians, meaning that he's either lied then or lying now. Given this is trump, it's likely both.
2) trump's claim that the meeting was "totally legal" and "done all the time in politics" conflict with what's already been revealed about that meeting.
3) The "totally legal" argument goes against the US Code 52 s.30121: It shall be unlawful for—
(1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—
(A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election;
(B) a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party; or
(C) an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 30104(f)(3) of this title); or
(2) a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) from a foreign national...

4) Where the "Other thing of value" applies to Russia claiming they have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton that trump and the Republicans could use to disrupt the 2016 elections in their favor. The "Solicit, Accept, or Receive" comes into play from the fact that donald trump junior was so very eager to get that dirt and arranged that meeting.

This should be a very simple rule: DO NOT WORK WITH FOREIGN NATIONS OR TAKE ANY FOREIGN MONEY WHEN RUNNING AN ELECTION CAMPAIGN. Yet there trump is, arguing that it's all legal and that his ignorance of the law is a defense.

One of the first things they taught me in High School Latin was this phrase: Ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse. But then again I doubt trump studied Latin, or even remembered what he failed to learn in High School.

This is trump, trying to get ahead of the scandal where Mueller is getting ever closer to tying trump's campaign - especially his own son - to the Russians already charged by Mueller of interfering/hacking the elections. But this is also trump, throwing his own son under the bus by making it so very clear that what junior did violated the US Code I quoted above.

It takes a certain level of stupidity to think that confessing to shit you've done can somehow be accepted or ignored, that your own argument of "it wasn't illegal!" would somehow sway the prosecutors about to put the hammer down on you. The smart move is to separate yourself from the evidence as much as possible and keep your own damn mouth shut.

Here's proof number 9718 that trump got help from Russia to steal the election. He doesn't have enough brain cells to even realize the smart play is to shut up.

Break out the Popcorn GIFs, this coming week is gonna be a doozy. 

A Spy In the House of Guns

At first she beckoned and lured one into her world; then, she blurred the passageways, confused all the images, as if to elude detection. 
- Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love

While everyone's been focused on the obvious Russian conspiratorial effort to subvert our nation, the Russians have been busy elsewhere, going after other avenues of attack to corrupt the Republican Party through the various SuperPACs that technically own the GOP.

The biggest spy scandal in years broke out almost a week ago when the FBI arrested one Maria Butina, an unusually well-known "lobbyist" around the Beltway power circles, for failing to register as a foreign agent while operating as a "lobbyist" and other acts of espionage.

It's gotten out there already that Russia had been laundering money through the National Rifle Association in order to pay off trump and other Republican candidates in an effort to get the 2014 sanctions lifted (as well as gaining undue influence over the U.S.). What Butina's arrest did was place a face and name on that corruption, and physically tying the NRA to our nation's biggest foreign threat.

To quote Jay Willis at GQ: The NRA Got Played.

Given how accustomed we've become to linking the Kremlin's election meddling with Donald Trump's presidential campaign, one of the most startling details about the odyssey of Maria Butina, the 29-year-old Russian "gun-rights activist" arrested on espionage charges this week, is that she was working to infiltrate conservative circles well before Trump announced his presidential bid. The fascinating tick-tocks of her work at BuzzFeed News, among others, are peppered with some of the most recognizable names in the GOP: Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, John Bolton, Bobby Jindal, Donald Trumps Sr. and Jr., and multiple presidents of the NRA, who saw Butina as a kindred spirit—and, thus, as someone whose motives they had no reason to question...

Butina ingratiated herself into every tier of Far Right social activity: She sucked up to Evangelicals, libertarians and tax-cutters, media conspiracy nuts, and above all the "Let's Shoot Everybody" enthusiasts eager to sell their wares to a promising Russian market.

She flirted publicly with a lot of men in conservative leadership roles, and allegedly forced herself - just read the disdain she expressed about her live-in "boyfriend" Paul Erickson (himself a questionable figure in GOP circles) - into relationships using sex as a weapon.

Okay, back to Willis:

Again, in retrospect, the warning signs were there for anyone who cared to look. As BuzzFeed News notes, in an autocracy with strict gun laws, the very idea of a strong grassroots analogue to the NRA is kind of absurd. But what Butina and her colleagues deduced is that the American right's blind, dogmatic devotion to protecting the Second Amendment would allow them to set aside any nagging misgivings about joining forces with her, if such misgivings even occurred to them in the first place. Put differently: A hostile foreign government scrutinized every aspect of American life and concluded that guns were the perfect access point for them to slip in undetected...

When you look at the National Rifle Association, about what motivates that organization - the profiteering via increased gun sales - you'll notice that the NRA relies on fearmongering of the worst kind to ensure a solid base of customers. That in order to do all that, ever since the 1970s that group turned away from Gun Safety and more towards a White Nationalist organization. When viewed from that angle, a merger between a blatantly jingoistic / faux-patriotic NRA and a corrupt foreign regime like Russia makes more sense.

One of the most disturbing trends of the last five years has been the growth of Far Right Nationalist/Populist (actually Fascist) groups across every Western democracy (and in democracies across the globe). Where Russia was once home to Soviet Communism, in the collapse of communism by the 1990s that nation - weakened by the humiliating collapse of the USSR - has redesigned itself into the exact - yet equally immoral - opposite of Nationalist Fascism. And having turned themselves into a Far Right nation, Russia is back to manipulating other nations... only this time using Fascism as the link.

In order to retain power as a permanently placed dictator, Putin allied himself to one of the few powerful organizations in post-Soviet Russia: the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, a harshly Far Right sect of Christianity. Doing so made Russia a cornerstone of the Far Right factions of Christianity, which itself feeds into the racist Nationalism of Far Right political groups like the UKIP in England, France's National Front, and nowadays the NRA here in the USA. There is growing evidence of financial ties and Russian interference in Western European elections, all geared towards one thing: putting Nationalist/Isolationist-minded and Putin-friendly governments in control of enough nations to break NATO and send the world back to 19th Century geopolitics (and all the horrors THAT entailed)

Owning the NRA gets Putin ownership of the GOP. Having trump in the White House is one thing, and arguably a temporary disaster waiting to fall apart. Ownership of the Republican Party is more long-term, and more devastating to our nation's well-being.

So now here's ANOTHER reason why Congressional Republicans won't lift a damn finger to stop trump. At first it was due to fear of their rabid Far Right voting base. And now it's ALSO due to fear of their deep-pocket paymasters.

How does it feel, Comrade Mitch, how does it feel to sell out your nation? And how does it feel, you sons-of-bitches, to sell yourselves out so cheaply?

The Second Civil War Will NOT Start Over Karen's Potato Salad

So fringe conspiracy nutcase Alex Jones - who sadly has far too many people paying attention to him - went out and tweeted a godawful plot twist for the ongoing Far Right Pity-Party Self-Oppression Narrative (via Adam L Silverman at Balloon Juice):

BREAKING: Democrats Plan To Launch Civil War On July 4th (I will not provide a direct link to anything by Jones if I can avoid it)

Yes, that's correct: Even with all the "Democrats In Disarray!" story lines floating around the screwed up Beltway Media, nothing can stop the wingnuts from convincing themselves those socialist libtards are one step away from violent global domination.

I haven't dived into Jones' full rant - mostly because I want to spare my brain cells from damage - but I can guess a lot of it revolves around getting minorities to riot in the streets and feminists kicking every white male in the groin until we white boys all surrender due to sympathetic pain-sharing.

I doubt it has anything logical to it, such as getting the U.S. military to the tune of 1,150,000 active servicepeople and 800,000 reservists to turn against their trumpian masters. I mean, that's a lot of Democratic libtards in all five branches of the military. I doubt most Republicans would believe there's that many Democraps among the ranks. Without enough military support, any civil war uprising is doomed to fail.

If the civil war planning has anything clever to it, the primary rule of seizing all means of communication would mean shutting down the likes of Fox Not-News, the entire Sinclair chain of local TV and radio stations, and also cutting off or crimping Internet across all 50 states. The logistics of such a move may seem simple in a movie (such as the Fire Sale of Die Hard 4.0), but in practice there's a lot of moving parts there and no guarantee of success. If anything, cutting the power on Fox would go a long way to disrupting trump's own methods of staying informed so... on this point alone it might be worth a go.

Look, here's the simplest reason why Alex Jones is just making noise about a goddamn civil war started by the Progressive(Libtard) Left on the 4th of July: There is no goddamn way it would work. Just consider that the 4th is a big holiday for people to go out and get drunk, meaning that every State Highway Patrol car is out on the major roads alongside County and City police just itching to pull suspicious drivers over. Would any librul risk the likelihood of getting pulled over by the cops? NO. End of argument.

If any group in this nation has shown the desire to make attempts to start any insurrection, it's been the gun-toting, Sovereignty-obsessed, white supremacist, wingnut Far Right. The real risk here is Jones stirring up that group into a fear-based froth, terrifying them into turning any public gathering on the 4th of July into a firearm-freakout bloodbath.

I have to admit I've been blogging here that we're already in a Second Civil War, but it's not a war in a conventional sense of battle lines and cities under siege. This has been a war fought over control of the political and media outlets running this nation. The fighting has less been open gunfights and more along the lines of street protests and attempts at voter turnout for this year's midterms. So far...

Jones is tweeting about Civil War for several reasons. Above all, it gets him attention and media traffic and mo' money. It keeps his audience terrified and ready for the worst if he ever finds the need to call an uprising of his own. And if a war in the streets finally does erupt, he's trying to position himself as the messenger/messiah leader driving his side of wingnuttia towards cultural purification and victory.

In the meanwhile, the Democratic Party of the United States is not planning a Civil War to be fought on the 4th of July.

They're trying to stop Karen from bringing her potato salad to the cookout. Raisins? AH HELL NAW...

A Real-Life X-File

(EDIT: as of 3/20, this is the most current finding.  The debris field IS in an area the plane could have reached...)
I have to admit the first few days I read up and chatted online about Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, it balanced between sadness - the most likely fate of a missing plane was an explosion or crash - and snark - making ill-advised comments about "aliens" or "that island from LOST".

The snark came from being a long-time aficionado of conspiracy theories and ghost stories.  Growing up, I read books in the 133 juvenile shelves rather than the standard fiction.  Getting into The X-Files TV show for me was easy, given my childhood interests in UFOs, Bigfoot, the Bell Witch, the Bermuda Triangle.

And here was Flight 370, disappearing off radar without a word.  Early searches for debris or a crash site turn up nothing.  The legendary black box(es), nowhere to be found.  Family and friends noting that their attempts to call their missing loved ones' cell phones were ringing: if the phones had been destroyed or completely cut off from cell signal, calls are known to revert immediately to voicemail.  Early research into the passengers and pilots didn't reveal warning signs outside of two illegal passports... except both passport users - Iranians - had no known terrorist ties, and one of them was following the standard behavior of someone seeking asylum.

But the last few days' revelations about what might have happened - that there was a deliberate switch-off of the plane's transponder and communications, that the plane changed course multiple times, that it avoided waypoints in such a way only a trained knowledgeable pilot could fly - has turned this mystery into a more serious and unsettling affair.  No more jokes.

There are now a ton of questions about Flight 370, above all: What the hell happened?

What was originally considered likely - mid-air explosion, or else mass decompression that froze/suffocated everyone on board - is no longer considered.  To be fair, if that had happened, we would have found wreckage by now.  That mid-flight course corrections were made, and that the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) and transponder (comm link to air traffic controllers) were turned off before the last contact makes this more deliberate than accidental.

So, if someone - someones - hijacked the plane, this unlocks these questions: Who did it, Why did they do it, and Where the hell did they think they could go?

Those Iranians seeking asylum using stolen passports are suspects again.  But if it's not them, that leaves 230 or so people (I'm subtracting the poor kids who were on-board).  Even the pilot and co-pilot are suspects, considering whoever commandeered the flight knew how to avoid certain waypoints and stuck to radar dead zones.

One thing we do know: whoever did this either could not or did not make the effort to turn off other tracking data coming from the plane.  The engines, for example, gave off signal data of a sort to satellite tracking systems (which is why we've found out there was no crash when and where we thought it would be), and those signals are not accessible from within the plane.  This was rarely reported information, so even the most highly trained hijacker might not have known...

Why did someone hijack this flight?  Usually it's done as a kind of Propaganda of the Deed, a violent act drawing attention to the person(s) committing that deed.  But there haven't been any valid claims or statements from known terror cells, no-one standing up with video evidence or otherwise.  Even if there was a vast conspiracy between nations and media outlets to not broadcast any terrorist demands or claims, there's too many sources that would have leaked by now.

Other reasons to do this would cover:

• someone on the flight was a target, although it begs the question why was the whole plane taken to do that.
• someone wanted a plane, any plane, for a future terror plot.
• there was something valuable on the plane that was needed, and for some reason this was the only way someone could get to it.
• there IS no reason: someone's doing this for kicks or a bizarre rational none of us can comprehend.

The question most confounding is the Where?  Given the location and circumstances, there's not a lot of Where to cover.  I've linked to that map above, showing an orange trail of possible plane paths after the last known satellite report from the plane's engines.

You'd think the northern path over Asia makes the most sense, considering this was a hijack and the hijackers would want a place to land.  There's places in China and central Asia past the Himalayas where that type of plane - even relatively small airports, even flattened desert - could land.  And this hijacking - with a plane full of Chinese citizens - is happening at a time of serious turmoil and mass terror attacks in West China involving Uighur separatists.

The problem with this argument is that China - as well as India and Pakistan - are tightly protected airspaces.  Military radar and alert systems would have spotted the plane even at low altitudes, and those areas are well-populated areas.  People would have reported seeing a low-flying airliner by now.  And neither of these nations - China in particular - would have kept silent on the matter even if they shot down the plane.  They'd argue with good reason that a hijacked airliner is a flying weapon, and they'd have every right to shoot it down to avoid a bigger catastrophe.

The southern path into the Indian Ocean is the other likely direction... except that's mostly water.  There are no known island or landstrip locations that way.  If the plane circled back over Australia, again that's an airspace with a solid radar net protecting it.  And why hijack a plane to fly it out into an ocean when blowing it up is just as easy, if not easier to pull off?

One other question remains: What has happened to the passengers and crew?

This is the most terrifying part.  While it wasn't a comfortable thought if there had been an explosion or crash, the best that could have been said was that the deaths would have most likely been quick.

This as a hijacking is infinitely worse.  Some passengers were families.  Some were kids.  If they're taken as hostages, why aren't we hearing demands from the party responsible (even in a massive media lockdown, someone would have leaked by now)?  If someone on that flight was a target, what is happening to that person (or persons)?  What's happened to the poor victims deemed expendable...

This is a global mystery with a ton of clues and almost no solid leads.  This is scary and wrong and I'm afraid it's not gonna end well for everyone...