Collusion not illegal? Try Subversion

While I agree that legal definitions must be precise. Public opinion doesn't turn on legal arguments.

Take the word collusion. Republicans are fond of pointing out, "That ain't no crime."

Neither is copying unless it's plagiarism or counterfeiting.

Neither is fibbing, except when it's defamation.

Neither is a traffic accident, except when it's a hit-and-run.
 
Neither is sex unless it's rape. 

Collusion is a general term for actions that might have been illegal. The press likes the word because they don't have to say "alleged."

However, the actions being discussed are not that innocuous. I can suggest a much better word than collusion to describe what happened between the Trump administration, the Russians, our election system, and our government:

SUBVERSION.

Now, when I put it like that, it sounds illegal and threating. Maybe it's because the Cold War wore it out that it hasn't been used. However, since "collusion" is being scoffed at, we might now have a good reason to dust off the word "subversion." Also, ask them what might happened in the Cold War if Russia did to us then what it did in 2016 and whether the Conservatives would be so obdurate about whether it was a crime.

Ironic Republicans, so guarded against subversion for generations, are now welcoming it in the person of Smugly the Clown and the Smugly family.

I suggest that "subversion" is the only term we ought to use to describe the crimes against our country.

Only Trump could have spurned Canada

Speaking on CNN, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said Trump's retailatory Tweet to Trudeau was Trump's effort to look tough before the big Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader.

No, Trump's implosion at the "G6+1 Clown" and explosion afterward was not a strategy. It's what Trump always does. A strategy implies some kind of change in behavior for the needs of the moment.

I'm not worried about the Korean meeting. Kim and Trump are like Hitler and Stalin. They like each other. Authoritarians often do. Kim's not going to give up his nukes (which were finished under Trump, BTW.) Trump's not going to stop US-South Korea war games. He's got too much of a hard on for hard power. Though he might step them back a little: pretend the forces are invading the Philippines instead of Kim's feifdom.

The worst that could happen is Kim might give Trump some good advice on how to run a prison state. I'm not too worried about that. Trump's not capable of learning anything. He's all 'tude.

Money: In my brash opinion (IMBO)

People don't understand money. I think if they did they would never allow people to amass millions and billions of dollars.

Here's my declaration: money is power. If you define power in a human social structure as the ability to get other people to follow your wishes, money definitely does that. Money is power that you can count. If a person has enough money, their power cuts through other considerations by subordinates like charisma or expertise. In fact, people will follow somebody with money to get money of their own, so they then get other people to do something for them.

If you question the premise of what power is, a good example I might give you is Josef Stalin. Why was he so feared? He was just a person. If he had been isolated from everyone else, he would have been no more dangerous than a single man. Yet, he was formidable because of how many people would follow his orders or even his wishes. According to history, everyone was happy when he died. Yet, nobody would kill him, nor even imprison him. A fear that everyone else would defend to the death, and would destroy not just turncoat, but all of the person's family and friends. With the purges, where Stalin's accomplices would kill anybody who might have been thinking about betrayal, people became even afraid of thinking about overthrowing the leader.

That was a power structure held together by terror. Money, however, is as sufficient, and it's more humane. Yet, we ought to notice just how much power we're delegating to the wealthy by letting them make money without limit. This raises a question: can we do anything? That I will have to leave for another posting.     

Why Trump pardoning accomplices could backfire

Trump apparently can't pardon himself. The Constitution says pardons are "granted." Legally speaking, you need two people for that. He might try, I don't think the courts will let him.
You can only pardon somebody after a crime's been committed. I'm not even sure there's been any fact-finding in Manaforte's case, and he's the one most loaded down with charges. There has to be  some fact-finding before the crime has been proved. Is  Mueller holding off cases until he either indicts or recommends impeachment for Trump? He might be. 

Also, pardons will be a double-edged sword. If Trump pardons somebody, they can still testify against him. And there's no Fifth Amendment for them and no way they can be prosecuted.

If Trump takes this direction, he better stay on the good side of the people he pardons. Like, if he pardons Manafort, he better also be ready to him hire him, and for a lot of money, because Manafort still owes the Russian mob big-time. There's a bond of guilt between accomplices. Take away that bond, and they could say anything. 

So, what might Trump be guilty of? I sat down and came up with an incomplete list: 


Money Laundering, (hiding the funds that bought off Stormy Daniels), conspiracy to commit money laundering (with Cohen), profiteering (Mar-a-Lago), espionage (holding secret meetings with Russian officials, and giving them secrets), receiving stolen goods (Democratic emails), conspiracy to commit cybercrime (agreeing to knowingly receive and use stolen emails), obstruction of justice (attempts to strongarm Comey, the Firing of Comey, the threats of Firing Mueller, the firing of FBI officials who helped Comey. There are many counts here), fraud (the bailout of ZTE, done for a bribe), violating campaign finances laws (Stormy Daniels again), insider trading (revealing the unemployment levels before it was officially released) . . .

I feel sorry for Mueller. It's a feast of riches. How's he ever going to narrow that down. We have a President who breaks laws constantly. But he'll stay in office for as long as Republicans in Congress continue to protect him, or until they're replaced.

Trump the Pardoner?

It now looks like Trump is going to use the pardon as his own personal samurai sword (I back away from calling it his "trump card," which from now on I'll call the "asshole card.") Rachel Maddow last night had a discussion about the pardon power, which is practically unchecked with the President. The only symantical limit is the president can't pardon himself, and he can't pardon ahead of time. There definitely has to ba a crime to pardon anybody. Her guest (sorry, didn't get the name) said that a pardon in an ongoing investigation against the President would probably (depends on the judge) lead to another charge of Obstruction of Justice.

However, Politifact doesn't mention this possibility, so I don't think it's very likely.


The only way to eject Trump is to impeach him, and that's not going to happen with Republicans running Congress.  Remember, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Congress can remove a president for no crime whatsoever.  

I'm back! Right on time . . .

Yes, I'm back finally, blogging again. I'm happy to see Missouri has shed itself of Eric Greitens. If we can get rid of Greitens, how much harder can it be to get rid of Trump? My nickname for Trump, BTW, is Smugly the Clown. He pissed me off when he said the Nazis at Charlottesville were good people. That's when I began to call him Smugly (I think it was then).

Really, I've never liked Trump. Going back to the 80s, my feelings were that he hand no redeeming qualities. So, you can imagine how depressed I was when the Electoral College selected him. I consider that people who didn't like Obama inflicted that misery on themselves. Obama's domestic policies were really nothing too different from any liberal Democrat. Except then there was the racism that always made it tolerable to lie about him.

I might call Trump names (or one name), but I won't lie about him.

Facebook bot-suppressed my post about global warming.

I didn't expect this: last night I ramble-wrote a post to my Facebook Timeline about global warming. I didn't research it, I just went off the facts or thoughts at the top of my mind about global warming. I hit the post button and a message immediately came up saying my post had been removed for being Spam and for violating community standards. By immediately, I mean, I didn't even see it go up. This was far too fast for a human to do. A bot false-flagged me. 

I had a chance, of sorts, to dispute it. I got to check a little box telling them it wasn't spam. Then I was told they would "try to" determine whether it "violated community standards." I frankly couldn't see how it could have done that, but I wouldn't have minded waiting several days or a week for them to determine that.

Only today, when I checked, there was a notice on it that said "Closed." Yep, they tried all right. Apparently, this was adjudicated by another bot.

What worries me about this was the subject: it was about global warming. Did it get flagged by a bot because of that? Even worse, was it a Facebook bot that did the flagging?

Yes, I know FB is a private company, and they have no obligation toward free speech, at the same time, they whole country (and perhaps the whole world) is in trouble if we can't discuss a topic like global warming on an influential board like FB. Also, if there are bots on FB that false flag the topic wherever it is found, that's important news, whether FB or somebody else is running the bots. 

Now you decide for yourself whether the post I'm quoting in full below was too strident. Please tell me what's offensive, or what you would edit out. Don't mine it for nasty words. There aren't any.

My censored post on my Facebook Timeline, 10/6/17, 9:29 p.m.:

It was a muggy day with the high temperature in the mid-eighties. Highs in the mid-eighties are also in the forecast for the next nine days. [Note: but it only got up to 72 today!]

I'm not ungrateful; I'm enjoying it, yet it gives me an uneasy, portentous feeling. This isn't autumn. Global warming has abducted autumn and replaced it with an imposter. What do we call this new season? Exxumn? (After Exxon.) El Bebe? (Since El Nino is taken). Shadow summer?

There were sixteen consecutive record high [temperature-average] months [worldwide] by September last year, [the month the streak ended] which was the hottest year on record, the third year in a row with that distinction. In that streak of warmest months ever, most of them not only beat the record, but beat the record for the amount by which the previous records were beaten.

Let's compare that to sports statistics [for reasons I will make clear]: have you ever heard of an athlete or team that breaks a record, then breaks its own record sixteen [fifteen] consecutive times? No, because it doesn't happen. Babe Ruth did something like it with home runs, but he was able to do that due to a rule change that dispensed with the "dead ball."

In statistics, there's something called "regression to the mean," which says if you do something record-breaking, it's likely you can't repeat it consecutively. This applies [both] to weather and athletes, because. Statistical laws hold for the whole universe, from the quantum to the galactic level.

Where weather is also like sports is that it shouldn't be able to set a record sixteen times. In fact, the three consecutive years of record high global temperatures that we're in right now also are [so] extremely unlikely they shouldn't happen.

Unless the rules of our planet have been changed. 

Let's accept no more denials, no more hedging about its cause. Global warming is real, and humankind did it. We're seeing an epic scientific event unfold. It dwarfs the eclipse that brought such elation earlier this year. It's better to enjoy the thrill of it before the catastrophe takes hold, because there's no stopping it now.

Afternotes: I made small changes, in brackets or with strikethroughs, for clarity or to correct facts. I did look up what I already knew to be true. No, I didn't just imagine us having sixteen consecutive hottest months worldwide on record. The Climate Central website verifies it.  It also gives other records I forgot about: 

• We haven't had a coldest month on record since February 1929.

• Also, there hasn't been a cooler than normal month worldwide in 32 years (381 months).

I know that globally, record highs have been outpacing record lows by 4-1, with the ratio increasing.

I'm no expert. For science, I'm, at most, a hobbyist. Yet, I don't have to be an astronomer to look up at the obvious. These records portend a huge changes coming to our climate and our way of life. I can't say whether it will be over the next five years or the next twenty, but it's not going to be much longer. Already our hurricane season has been one for the books, and there will be no recovery for Houston or Florida if storms like this keep coming.