I have a quick question: when was the last time you heard or saw some high-profile personality charged with some kind of crime step up to the microphone and say, “Wow. You got me. I did it.”? Mostly, their lawyers come up and say, “My client disputes these charges and looks forward to his/her day in court to prove their innocence.” Then, some period of time later, after negotiations (which the lower classes don’t get) and/or a trial (which the lower classes ALSO may not get) they’re sentenced for the crime, having not so much “disputed” as “plea-bargained.” It’s standard operating procedure, simply the way things are done in this once great nation. So, great prevaricator that he is, I don’t even see trumpery denials as lies – they’re just kind of…expected.

But Former Guy IS the first to call for protests and stir his most extreme supporters to potential violence – just like he did on January 6th, 2021. So far, when someone DOES come out, there are only a few. Many of his most radical supporters are currently cooling their heels in prison from the last time he called them out under fraudulent pretenses.

We’ll see what happens this Tuesday when he’s expected to turn himself in for booking and a short chat with a judge but I hope his threats of violence don’t deter the legal system from doing the right thing. Yes, the Cult 45 crowd might come out, furious, but they’re quickly identifying themselves and culling themselves from responsible society and, long term, that’s a good thing…

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Yesterday, I wrote about the links between the treasonous Reagan and the path to the traitor Trump. I suggested that American presidents had been reduced to servicing the One Percent only and that they all share in the decline of a once-great nation. Then I got called out on an inaccuracy by one of my friends. (Thanks, Brad!) I’ve taken to using the term “One Percent” as a kind of short-hand for “rich people.” I’m actually referring to the top 10%, a much larger group but still a small segment compared to the bottom 50%. I shall endeavor to do better going forward…

At the risk of irritating some of my left-leaning readers, I thought I should at least sketch out my reasoning for the claim that Reagan and each president after (party not relevant) have been primarily in the service of the top 10%. (See? Better already.) This list is hardly exhaustive and it only focuses on the services (since 1980) to the Top Ten Percent each president has managed during their reign…er, I guess, “administration.”

I’ve long held that Reagan was the first major success of the Ten Percent in their assault on the American people when they decided they had well and truly had enough of the New Deal. Reagan got to be President and, later, really rich – just so long as he was willing to work toward the benefit of the Ten Percent while in office. He befuddled a wide swath of not-so-savvy Americans into believing in a fantasy nonsense called ‘Supply Side’ or “trickle down” economics. To this day, there are still cons out there waiting for something to trickle down to them. (Some people just never learn.)

Reagan launched the first salvo in the ‘tax cuts for the rich’ paradigm. He reduced the tax rate at the top. The economy crashed. He raised taxes on the middle class. The economy improved. It was never a tax cut. It was – and is – a tax shift. (It should be noted, though, that because the top 10% enjoy control over significantly more wealth than the bottom 50%, the government STILL loses revenues when these little shifts do their thing.) Every time they do it, they do it TO YOU. And they’ve been doing it too you ever since.

The quality of the Presidency, sadly, has not always been great. But since Reagan, it has gone steadily downhill – largely because each President is expected to do great things for the Ten Percent – which often means doing harsh things to the majority of citizens and absolutely horrible things if you just happen to live in one of the small, poorly defended countries the US decides we have an “interest” in. But Bush 41, immediate successor to Reagan, was the last old-school guy. He actually raised taxes on the wealthy even after promising he wouldn’t (“Read my lips!”) because it was in the best interest of the country. His old-school attitude got him ousted after one term. Then we got Clinton.

Yeah, using his cover as a “Democrat,” old Bill raised taxes on the wealthy a little bit. The economy boomed and more importantly, people relaxed and looked away feeling like we were “back on track.” But then he also decimated Welfare, undermined the free press, and ignored the derivatives market that led to the crash of 2007. Oh, and he signed NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA was very good for corporations, not so good for the American worker. In short, Clinton was the best corporate president the Dems ever elected. Any money problems Clinton may have faced in his lifetime have been well and truly eliminated. Quite the reward. (As a sidebar I must confess, at the time I didn’t understand the damage Clinton had done. I was kind of “all in” on the guy, blinded by his charisma, and even supported the idea of Hillary. Now that I know what I know, I’m glad Hillary didn’t make it…)

Clinton was followed by Bush 43 who initiated the very unamerican ‘Patriot Act,’ turning the Bill of Rights on it’s ear, and invaded not one but two foreign sovereign states in an effort to raid their natural resources. In Afghanistan, he tried to install a puppet government friendly to American business interests. In Iraq, they just wanted the oil. The invasions were good for business and good for the weapons industry – not so good for the soldiers fighting and dying. But that was okay. None of them were super-wealthy. He also appointed two new “justices” to the so-called Supreme Court and they helped to bring us the democracy-destroying and ideological Citizens United ruling – a MASSIVE win for those rich enough to buy their very own politician…

Then we got Obama. Obama won by running on national health care for all. What we got, instead, was national corporate health insurance which often can’t be used to see a doctor as co-pays, share-of-costs, and fees are still outrageously high. It was a plan originally conceived by conservative Stink tank ‘The Heritage Foundation.’  It was a conservative “economic plan” brought to you by a “Democratic” president.  But it shut everybody up…for awhile, anyway.

Trump was essentially just a natural follow-up to that sequence. Presidents had been working to the exclusive benefit of the top Ten Percent for so long, it seemed time to have a member of the class AS President. (Here’s hoping that they have somebody, somewhere better the the Dumbass, though. That guy doesn’t make them look good at all…) He, too, was a tax-shifter

I haven’t included Biden because he’s still in office and, as we learned from Bill Clinton, it can be very difficult to say how his administration did without a little historical distance…

I said this yesterday and I’ll say it again: 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…

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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…