The Horses Have Bolted - FUBAR - Ya Cain't Hear Sheet Music

There is no reason to have a stable door if you don't close it. It's not a decoration. When it's open, you no longer have a stable, you have a lean-to.

This is what horses kept in a lean-to might look like, assuming you can find them to photograph them.

Common sense is not rocket science. Common sense is predicated upon intelligence and perception. You need to be mindful of where you are and what's happening to have any common sense at all.

"The Threat" by Andrew G. McCabe is aptly named. It's also a great read.

The book is broken into named chapters. The chapters have named sections. Mr. McCabe is thorough. It's as if he took CT Scans of the FBI's structure and overlaid his story on those images.

Apparently this is how the FBI actually operates. They collect endless images using FD-302 forms. The forms are gathered and processed and a picture emerges. I've never seen an actual FD-302 so I can't really say whether or not it's a form or a format.

In the last paragraph of the "Extremely Careless" section of the "Examination" chapter, McCabe writes:

"When is the right time to give up on people's general ability to understand any slightly complicated statement that they don't agree with? When do you declare that the political process, or the press, no longer has the power to facilitate comprehension? When is the right time to act from skepticism and cynicism, rather than from faith in a society you have always believed in?"

These are excellent questions. They are beautifully framed. They are the perfect questions of/for our time. They are arguably decades, if not centuries late in the asking.

Fascists operating openly and freely is an indication of major systemic problems. You could say it's an indication that you waited too long to close the barn door.

McCabe's first 3 lines in the book are:

"Between the world of chaos and the world of order stands the rule of law. Every person in the United States, from a murderer to the president, is subject to the rule of law. This has been true since the founding of the country."

Are these mere aspirations? Are they fantasies we believe in so we can sleep soundly at night?

We abandoned the "rule of law" when we formed our country. We revolted. Just ask the English about it.

The man who wrote our "Declaration Of Independence" was a slave owner when he wrote it, was a slave owner when the Constitution was later adopted, and was a slave owner when he later became President.

We were all raised pledging allegiance almost every day while when we attended grammar and high school.

Anyone who served in any office has had to swear to uphold our Constitution. The same is true for anyone who has ever been in law enforcement or served in our military.

Segregation was alive and well when I was a teenager. Women were not allowed to vote when my grandmother was alive. Blacks were still denied their voting rights when I started college.

Today, people are working to bring segregation back. Open racism is making a comeback. Fascism is on the rise.

On March 7th, U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III sentenced Paul Manafort to 47 months in prison. Judge Ellis simply ignored sentencing guidelines that recommended 19 to 24 years.

He stated that Manafort "has lived an otherwise blameless life.” That's simply bullshit.

Most everything I am reading shows consistent condemnation for this sentence. Fine. Most everything I am reading evidences some level of despair on the author's part. Not fine.

This particular judge has been overtly hostile toward Mueller and his investigation. The fact that this hostile judge actually sentenced Manafort to any time is a victory.

The sentence is not "the" victory that will win the war, but it is a victory. There is a much bigger war going on. We are in the midst of World War III.

World War III started, in earnest, in the 1990s when Putin first took control in Russia.

In 2014 he seized Crimea.

He followed that up with an invasion of Ukraine.

Next he went into Syria and propped up Assad.

All the while he's been working to destabilize countries throughout Europe.

Putin wants to break NATO. NATO is a real problem for Putin and Russian expansion in Europe.

Putin aligned with President Xi Jinping of China.

Xi is building military bases in the South China Sea and threatening political stability in Asia and throughout the Pacific.

As if on cue, North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un turned up the heat after Trump became president. In 2017, Korea tested a record number of missiles that Russia helped him with.

In 2016, Putin successfully used cyber warfare to interfere with our elections and get a Russian asset elected POTUS.

World War III is not the focus of this posting. Corruption is the focus of this posting. Stay focused.

Political corruption is rampant in the U.S. It's out of control. It has left us totally vulnerable and our main foreign adversary has taken advantage of it to establish a foothold/base inside our country.

Political corruption has been a constant problem for us. Corruption is part of our nation's history. It's part of our culture. We pay movie makers to entertain us with it.

Corruption is simple bribery. Money is the usual exchange medium.

Every political party we've ever had has been engaged in corruption of some sort. Today's Republican Party has excelled in corruption. It organized corruption.

Today's Republican Party was bought by a handful of ultra wealthy Americans who chose to retain the name.

They fear majority rule. They are driven by greed. They don't want any political considerations to get in the way of their bringing it all home to papa.

Republican politicians are their employees now. It's a lot easier to manage employees. There's less left to chance. The takeover wasn't that hard and it wasn't that hostile.

Being wealthy doesn't make you smart, especially when you are blinded by greed. The new owners weren't experienced politicians. They didn't realize that a totally corrupted government is susceptible to a real hostile takeover.

Their limited focus enabled those with far more experience in corruption, intimidation, and coercion to get to GO and play in the game.

Robert Mueller has his hands full. He has been charged with nothing less than saving the country - a country that's been corrupted - a country whose government is being dismantled in order to get rid of restrictions that interfere with profits.

Saving the country must start with rooting out and eliminating all foreign influence and interference inside our government.

Doing that requires neutralizing and eliminating all foreign assets. Unfortunately, the Executive Branch of our government is controlled by foreign assets. It's a freakin infestation of foreign assets.

It seems like everyday we are learning of new players/assets who have gotten their hooks into our government. Li "Cindy" Yang is a big Trump donor. She was born in China. Li started a chain of Asian "spas" throughout South Florida.

Li seems to be pals with Trump's entire family, as well as, many other prominent Republicans.

Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, and a Trump friend and supporter, was recently arrested and charged with "soliciting prostitution" at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa - just down the road from Mar-A-Lago.

Poor Mueller. His job would be enormous if he had the cooperation of our Legislative and Judicial Branches. Sadly, that's not the case. Mueller is a modern day Sisyphus.

The Republican Party is so compromised by both foreign and domestic corruption that it is working tirelessly to prevent Mueller from doing his job and succeeding.

The Republican Party has also been doing everything in its power to pack the Judiciary. It's hedging its bets.

The Republican Party lost control of the House this year. That's a major loss. Paul Ryan is gone for greener pastures and Nancy Pelosi is the House Majority Leader. Putin's control of the Executive Branch is weakening.

The Republican Party still has control of the Senate. Mitch McConnell, the Senate's Mad Hatter, is relentless in his efforts to protect the interests of the folks who bought the Republican Party. Those interests are in jeopardy if Mueller succeeds.

It's complicated and confusing. It's hard to tell the players without a scorecard. It's easy to get disoriented and lose your way.

Meanwhile, Trump works hard to incite his base.
Inciting mobs is not leadership. Inciting mobs does nothing to protect our country. Inciting mobs is dangerous.

In 2016 Trump promised to "drain the swamp". He hired Paul Manafort as his campaign manager. Manafort successfully managed Trump's campaign through Trump's nomination at the Republican Convention.

Manafort earned millions working in the Ukraine to get Kremlin backed Viktor Yanukovych elected. Yanukovych was a criminal and a thug. People who opposed him were arrested and assassinated.

Yanukovych was not the first dictator to hire Manafort. Ferdinand Marcos, Mobuto Sese Seko, Jonas Savimbi, and Sani Abacha are among his former employers.

In 1980, Manafort co-founded a Washington based lobbying group with Roger Stone and George Black.

Manafort's clients were known as the "Torturers' Lobby". They were brutal. People who opposed them died.

Enough said about Paul Manafort's "blameless life". Clearly any campaign run by this man was not going to "drain" any swamp.

The Republican Party doesn't have a monopoly when it comes to hedging bets. Putin hedged his bets in 2016 by supporting the campaigns of both Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein.

Bernie sewed dissension within the Democratic Party. Jill ran as the Green Party candidate and helped siphon off votes from Clinton during the election.

Bernie advocates "Democratic Socialism". This tends to confuse and/or anger Democrats, they don't understand why or how Bernie was able to run in their 2016 primaries. Bernie has announced he's going to run again as a Democrat in 2020.

Republicans would love to re-brand Democrats as Socialists. Americans have been taught to fear both Socialism and Communism. The average American can't distinguish between these political/eonomic ideologies.

Bernie ran for his Senate seat as an Independent. When he was mayor in Burlington, Vermont, he called himself a "socialist". He has said that he wasn't a Democrat.

Republicans love the fact that Bernie is running as a Democrat. It helps them cast all Democrats as Socialists.

Bernie campaigned for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) when she ran as a Democrat for the House in the 2018 mid-terms. Ocasio-Cortez's parents are Puerto Rican Americans. Alexandria was born in Bronx, New York.

Bernie didn't just campaign for Ocasio-Cortez in 2018. He took her around the country with him to campaign for other Democrats. The MSM ate it up. OCR became the "socialist" face of the new Democratic Party. The Republicans couldn't be happier.

This a case of betting on people's general inability to understand slightly confusing imagery.

This is a case of the MSM's inability to facilitate comprehension. The water gets muddier and our citizens become further polarized. The divisions deepen.

Despite all the horses running wild out there, we have always seemed to make progress. It may not have been fast enough for everybody, but the progress was constant. That all changed when Donald Trump became POTUS in 2017. 

In 2016, Putin torpedoed the White House. Our Ship of State is sinking. The swamp is worse than ever and it has been indelibly stained by Trump.

The Republicans have ignored this and focused on cutting taxes for the wealthiest 1% of our citizens. We are engaged in a class war here at home.

Despite all their paranoia and distrust, our founding fathers left us with the one tool, the one weapon with which to both defend ourselves and fix our flaws before they become fatal.

The Republicans wish to disenfranchise us as voters. The Electoral College has evolved to the point where it supplants democracy.

Gerrymandering has become a science. Political districts can be restructured and manipulated to render our votes meaningless.

Voter suppression is employed as a crude, blunt force tool used to stop us before we even get to vote.

Finally, when all else fails, big money is used to simply buy/bribe those who are elected.

The first bill our newly elected House members introduced is H.R.1 - the "For The People Act Of 2019". It is legislation to expand voting rights, get big money out of politics, and create ethical standards for public servants.

On March 8th, the House passed the bill by a 234-193 vote. Mitch McConnell referred to H.R.1 as a "turkey" and a "parade of horrible".

Mitch said he would not allow it to come up for a Senate vote "Because I get to decide what we vote on."

Accountability is so elusive. Remember in 2013 when Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance went against his own prosecutors on the Major Economic Crimes Bureau and refused to prosecute Ivanka and Donald Trump, Jr. for fraud even thought they had them dead to rights?

The former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, retired. He was trashed and called a liar by Trump. His security clearance was revoked. James tried to warn us about Russian cyber warfare.

U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates was fired after warning Trump about the threat James Flynn posed to our national security. Trump is reported to have called Sally a "cunt" before firing her.

U.S. Attorney For The Southern District Of New York Preet Bharara was fired by Trump after a series of weird phone calls from Trump. Preet was known as an anti-corruption "crusader".

Director of the F.B.I. James Comey was fired after refusing to pledge loyalty to Trump. It was Comey who got the F.B.I. started on investigating Russian interference in our elections. Comey was called a liar and thoroughly trashed by Trump.

A day after firing Comey, Trump met in the White House with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. He joked about firing Comey and referred to Comey as a "nut job".

Most recently, Deputy Director of the F.B.I. Andrew G. McCabe was fired on Trump's trumped up claims that he was dishonest and lied. McCabe recommended hiring a Special Counsel to investigate Russian interference during 2016. Trump trashed both McCabe and McCabe's wife, Dr. Jill McCabe.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been under constant, if not daily, public attack from Trump and a host of Republican Senators and Representatives. He is investigating Russian interference in our elections.

Cyrus Vance is still going strong. Ivanka and Trump, Jr. are still going strong. Dedicated public servants are being humiliated and fired. It makes you wonder. What's going on? Is there a word for this?

Is McCabe delusional when he says every person in the U.S. is subject to the rule of law? Is McCabe the guy dying of thirst in the desert who struggles to reach an oasis that is really a mirage?

Easy come easy go in a wide open barn. The only reason our country has not been hopelessly lost to fascism is because of the mid-terms. 2020 is coming up fast. If we don't take the Senate and the Presidency, while preserving the House, we are toast.

If we are to make it to 2020 and beyond, we need to stop acting like children on a car trip who are continually asking their parents "are we there yet". 

We need to stop second guessing Mueller. We need to stop predicting when new indictments will be filed. We need to do one thing and one thing only. We need to vote. We need to vote for whoever is running as a Democrat in 2020.

This ain't rocket science. It's survival. It's that simple. It really is. If you need to do something between now and then call your representatives and bug them. Tell them you want them to protect Mueller, hold Trump accountable and enact voting reform. Knock yourself out.

No one gains from people who want to get rid of Trump and fix our political system going to war with each other except Trump, Putin and the owners of the Republican Party.

Class warfare in the United States and World War III all happening at the same time. Who woulda thunk it?

Meanwhile in the "you can't make up shit like this" category: Trump and the Republicans are trying to tag the Democrats as anti-Semites bacause of a comment by Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar; Kim has rebuilt his Sohae rocket launch site and is renewing his nuclear weapons' program; Trump molested our flag at the CPAC conference; Conservatives want us to boycott Girl Scout Cookies because AOC was a Girl Scout; Senator Mike Rounds said Trump paid hush money to Stormy Daniels because, "the president loves his family."; Jerry Falwell, Jr., said he will shoot AOC if she "tries to take my cows"; Donald Trump is autographing Bibles; and Bill Mitchell says Trump is "literally being guided by the hand of God".

 

You literally have to see Bill Mitchell's video to believe it.

https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1105105386804264961

Democrats took a moment to form a circular firing squad over Representative Omar. Thankfully, it didn't last too long, but it was played up bigly by the MSM.

I can see someone losing faith in our society and getting lost in skepticism and cynicism.

When I was working on this posting, it rather mysteriously published itself prematurely. When I returned it to a draft, my edits began to disappear. I'm not sure what was/is happening.

I can tell you this. My daughter took me to the J.R.R. Tolkien exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan on March 9th.

The "Corsair" ship's bell is on display in the museum's lobby. I was looking at it with my granddaughter and reached under to see if it still had its clapper. It did. I pushed it ever so gently. It rang ever so clearly. The staff admonished me.

The people in the lobby when I rang the bell may be the only people who have heard it in the last 100 years or so. Whatever the case, nothing can take the place of actually hearing the bell. Some things just have to be experienced to be believed.

It's the same with our rule of law, it means absolutely nothing until someone sees it in action.

Holy Moly!