Thursday turned out to be a pretty good day. Well, for me. Former Guy might not have enjoyed it as much. If you missed it, well, you’d have to be living under a rock but if you’ve been living under a rock, Former Guy was indicted for his hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. The hush money payments are just a misdemeanor – unless they’re associated with some other crime. Then they become a felony. My understanding is Former faces felony charges so it’s more than just the hush money.

I had reservations about this particular indictment. I was concerned that something that could be seen as petty might not be the best place to start. I don’t feel that way, anymore. I see value in starting with something with lower stakes. There are obviously going to be legal maneuvers of every kind. IS an American ex-President an American citizen subject to American laws? I say yes, but the Roberts Supremely Kangaroo Court might well rule otherwise. They’re ideologues and they prefer a dictatorial strongman. A king would be right up their alleys.

But…thus begins the process. Former Guy will do what he always does – stall, lie, and obfuscate. He’ll seek every delay he can find and appeal all the way up as high as he can for every detail of the case. But he can only do those things once. Should courts rule he IS subject to the laws of the land – by no means a certainty – he won’t be able to challenge the legality of answering for other issues brought before the court. The Stormy Daniels indictment will clear the legal path for other, more serious indictments presumed to be coming sooner or later.

Besides, it felt so good to see him finally facing some consequences for his misdeeds…

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I’ll tell you this: most of the rank and file cons are keeping a low profile until they decide how best to attack the charges against their CheetoJesus but some are out, predictably claiming the whole thing is politically motivated and a witch hunt. Personally, I would be angry and massively depressed if it turned out they’re right. I have no love for the Dumbass. None at all. But I would NOT want to see the legal system perverted just to harass political opponents. I count that downright unamerican…

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Also on Thursday, within minutes of learning about the big indictment, I also learned that the New York Times has continued to look into the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979. You may not be up-to-the-minute. In 1979, some Iranian “college students” stormed the American embassy in Tehran, Iran and captured the compound and the employees working there. The President at the time, Jimmy Carter, did pretty much everything he could do to secure the release of the hostages but no matter what he did, nothing worked. The hostages ended up being held prisoner until January, 1981.

The thing is, the Iranian Hostage Crisis really hurt Carter in the 1980 presidential election when he was running for a second term against Mr. 666, Ronald Wilson Reagan. To be clear, it wasn’t the only thing. The American (and world) economy was kind of going through it at the time and that was working against him, too. At one point, Carter even authorized a covert military operation in an attempt to recover the embassy and the people in it. The operation blew up in the desert. Literally. It was kind of the last straw and Reagan won the election. He was inaugurated on January 21, 1981 and the hostages were released almost exactly one-half hour later.

The official story was that the “students” were so frightened of Reagan’s great big firm…um…resolve they just quaked and surrendered. But stories started swirling almost right away that Reagan’s campaign team had been working behind the scenes to convince the “students” to hold the hostages until Reagan took office and he would give them a better deal. (He did, too. That’s how the world came to know the name Oliver North.) The thing is, working with foreign nationals against the efforts of the American government and against the best interests of American citizens? To me, that seems like a treasonous act.

The NY Times has never let it go. They kept trying to prove or disprove, or at least verify, various aspects of the story and have, over time, confirmed enough to state with little doubt that the Reagan campaign did, in fact, collude with the Iranian “College Students” to affect, in essence, “steal,” the 1980 election. I read about the NY Time’s confirmation that an act of treason put Reagan in the White House within minutes of reading about Trump’s indictment.

The reason these two stories go together so well, in my mind, is that a decision to undermine the electoral process in 1979 through what I see as a traitorous act led directly to the vacuous criminal now facing charges in New York and investigations in several other places for several other crimes. The focus for selecting Presidential candidates – especially for, but not limited to Republicans – became one thing and one thing only: serve the One Percent. Their first guy, Reagan, was charismatic and could, marginally, pull off a scene. Their last guy, 45, attracts attention like a fatal car crash on the highway and can barely string a basic sentence together. But they’ve ALL had one thing in common: they service the One Percent and only the One Percent.

Sure, a once-great nation can’t fix it’s roads, or it’s water system or it’s sewer system or fix it’s schools. Sure, there aren’t enough cops to control traffic anymore and basic social services, once paid for by taxes, now cost the user. Simple for the rich, a burden on everyone else. But, hey, rich people don’t have to pay taxes and that has been their only goal since 1980.

I’ll tell you this: I, for one, am sick of it. I’m MORE than ready to go back to the New Deal policies that made America great in the first place; unions, regulated business practices, and high taxes on high incomes. Remember, it’s always true that high tax rates cause the One Percent to actually do what they always promise low tax rates might someday encourage them to do…