Houston floods dominate headlines….but plenty of other things are also going on. The storm has dominated the news recently & rightly so. From the same storm some areas are getting 50 inches of rain? I’ve never heard of such a thing other than going back to the days of Noah. Our thoughts & prayers go out to the people of Houston & surrounding area. The blame game saying Houston, a metropolitan area of 6 million, should have been evacuated before the storm is ridiculous. Not just the logistics of moving/relocating that many people, but they weren’t even in the path of the eye, which at that time Houston was originally predicted to get around two feet of rain, not four or five. Mostly lost in all the other major news headlines from the weekend, we’ve hit a new milestone in the Russian investigations! Along with the unprecedented rain event in Texas, it looks like storm clouds are also pouring down heavy rains on Trump & his campaign officials. Mueller has issued subpoenas for associates of Manafort to testify in front of a Grand Jury. The investigations are following the money to get at the facts, which large sums of money originally paid to Manafort from a Ukraine leader friendly to Putin certainly raises eyebrows. It’s also rather suspicious Manafort & others connected with the campaign never registered as foreign agents as required by law. It seems so many top Trump campaign officials had so many direct ties to the Russians, from which they tried to hide or lie about those contacts all along. These Grand Jury testimonies could produce a treasure cove of new information. The pieces continue to come together over all things Russia that are gradually painting a clearer picture. The echo can deny it all they want, but there’s something there.
Other pieces being reported tonight is Mueller investigating whether Trump deliberately hid the real purpose of that infamous meeting organized by Donny Jr. a year ago in Trump Tower. Another key player from Trump’s campaign is Flynn, who already admitted months ago he would have quite a juicy tale to tell if the investigators can pry it out of him. There’s recent revelations of an apparent role he may have played in trying to acquire Hillary’s hacked emails from the Russians. There’s also word that Trump a couple years ago was smooth-talking Putin in aspiring to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, which claims from a Trump associate tied the project into helping Trump get elected, so what could he have meant by that? Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen also sent frequent emails & had regular contact with a top Putin aide over these business dealings. Large loans to Trump’s family from Russian banks are also in the mix. These are yet more suspicious events which certainly could have relevance to the case. We can only surmise about all the hot trails Mueller & his team must be on likely directing them to the fires producing all that smoke. Trump himself remains quite busy lately giving license to racism & bigotry which had become severe enough to rise to the level of criminality. He also remains completely unconcerned about a foreign adversary interjecting themselves into our election, continuing a disturbing pattern that our prez considers the rule of law as little more than a bothersome suggestion. The past week our sociopath-n-chief has demonstrated in spades this total disregard for the rule of law only helps validate the possibility he may well have been personally culpable in committing even more serious crimes, such as the not-so-farfetched likelihood he could have engaged in impeachable offenses during the campaign & in the subsequent cover-up.
Other news dropping this past weekend were of Trump’s attempts to intervene with the DOJ to step in & drop the charges against Sheriff Arpaio. By pardoning him, Trump once again proves his commitment to propagating racism, bigotry, discrimination & lawlessness. His series of chaotic moves since becoming President aren’t exactly what people had in mind when Trump constantly boasted he would drain the swamp. Could the reckless pardon be a stepping stone by testing the waters on the possible blowback from potential future pardons of lawbreakers in the Russian scandal? Also, recent reports indicate CIA Director Mike Pompeo seems to be auditioning to win the Devin Nunes cover-up award for trying to protect Trump by diverting/deflecting details of the investigation. We must remain vigilant with all these news stories surrounding the Russian scandal, since the calculations coming from Trump & all his minions appear to pave the way for hiding evidence about Russia, along with reversing civil rights & establishing a police state, which in conjunction with a state-run media (the echo) are providing the necessary ingredients for forming a dictatorship.
Folks, as I’ve warned about for months, we’re watching a presidency out of control with no regards for convention, traditions, civility & laws. My concerns are being played out before our very eyes with each passing week, that he has no intention of performing the normal duties as President of the United States, but prefers to divide us in a ruthless attempt to usurp power as a fascist rogue dictator if he can get away with it, preferring to remain leader of the United Trumpeters. So his idea of draining the swamp is to attack establishment institutions which have served us well & protected our democracy for centuries. By tearing down & running roughshod over the media, judiciary, intelligence agencies & all political opponents, along with his pardon power to enable lawless acts but are cheered on by his mesmerized fans, Trump seeks to rule with an iron fist & use the power of the office to thumb his nose at the foundations of our time-honored constitutional democracy. The question becomes, do enough Americans have the appropriate concern & wisdom to see the seriousness of the moment? Together as Americans we must hold our President accountable & rein in his authoritarian instincts. We must also call out the echo for their constant lies, distortions & conspiracies, while realizing some Trumpeters are too far gone from the mind-control the echo has over them, but so long as the vast majority of us stand for truth & virtue, we can fight back in our battle to preserve our freedoms & democratic system.
Aside from being a lousy President, he’s not even a quality human being. The recent words & deeds in essence supporting dehumanizing stances on racism, bigotry & lawlessness set examples from America’s top officeholder that establishes precedents far more dangerous than most people can even imagine. Our internal threats might be becoming as dangerous as our external enemies. The tinder box our nation is in could spark some hate attack which ratchets out of control into an actual civil war, that now seems as likely as engaging in a new war overseas. A few alarmed GOP leaders in Congress & even administration cabinet members are taking the high road by calling out some of Trump’s more sinister recent affronts, from Cohn to Tillerson to the Senate Majority Leader to the Speaker of the House to Kasich (who for the sake of our nation should now be President), & also Cubs fan’s Arizona Senators. For the segment of the GOP base that reject those valid criticisms & warnings, they’re also in effect rejecting ethical values & democratic principles, affirming/excusing wretched presidential declarations tearing away at our moral fabric which risk obliterating the very underpinnings of our constitutional democracy. Americans are being offered a clear choice between right & wrong, which regrettably roughly 1/3 of the nation still hold true to a reprehensible cause which mounting evidence suggests is mostly destructive, dangerous & immoral. It’s the age-old battle of good vs. evil played out in our current political conflict. These concerns I’ve expressed are detailed in the numerous relevant links from the newsfeeds the past few days.
I’m all in….even though they both deny it for now. We must unify the nation & end the hyper-partisan gridlock to ever have hope of getting America back on track. Plus these leaders have a proven track record of governing & solving problems. They’d be a heck of a lot better than what we have in the White House now….
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/top-republican-democrat-mulling-idea-160620013.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/full-kasich-political-pardons-like-arpaio-should-be-out-of-bounds-1033617475584
Views from the far-left….This is the section featuring articles which are often way out there, but still offering far more credible info than their counterparts on the extreme right who live in delusional echo-world….
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