Well, lets’ see. Has anything worth writing about happened in the last couple of days? Some people call the “news” we get in this country on Fridays, “Take out the garbage day.” NORMALLY, it’s just fluff stories and light stuff. Sometimes, though, something important slips in under the radar – and right past the masses, hopefully. This was not that Friday.

Donny lost his fraud trial in New York. No, that one starts in March. This is the civil case brought by Letitia James. The judge, Arthur Engoron handed down his much anticipated ruling. $365 million dollars from Donny, two of his criminal kids, and a couple of their cohorts. The lions share goes to Donny, though, at $355 million dollars. You’d think he’d LOVE that. He got the biggest numbers. The Best numbers. Nobody has EVER had numbers like him.

In addition, he’s barred from doing business in New York for three years and can’t work with any bank, any where, that is registered to do business in the state of New York. Being the financial capitol of the world, that’s pretty much any bank large enough to do crime, er, business on his scale. I was disappointed.

Up until the ruling, it was assumed Art – can I call you Art? – Okay, it was assumed Judge Engoron was going to bar him from doing business in New York for the rest of his life. He even wrote up the order. THAT is what I wanted. Then I remembered. This is just the first conviction in a long line of convictions. This was a civil trial, not a criminal trial. This cost him money, but other trials he’s facing could very well cost him his freedom. That is to say, most rational Americans expect him to be in prison within three years…

He testified in one of his depositions he has about $400 million cash on hand. The way he lies, that might well mean he has $1.28, but let’s use his numbers. He just got hit with $355 million to New York. He’s already been ordered to pay $83 million to E. Jean Carroll for ‘Defamation Loss II,’ the sequel to his famous ‘Defamation, What Not To Do’ trial,’ which cost him an additional $5 million. That comes to $443 million dollars. Wait, no it doesn’t. I mean, it does, but there’s interest. According to Letitia James, that starts at around $99 million, and counting, pumping the beginning balance he owes to $542 million dollars.

I suspect most people think he’s going to tap into “campaign contributions” to pay some or all of the bill. It’s not supposed to be legal. NONE of this has anything to do with his maladministration nor a campaign but, since when does Donny care about legal? I don’t know how long MAGA can keep this up. (Actually, it’s only about $8 bucks to each of the 70 million MAGA who voted for him last election, despite his crimes and failures.) He’s also still got a compelling interest in his website ‘Truthiness Social.’ Hey, that has the word ‘Social’ in it. It must be communism.

Now comes the stalling. I’ll give Donny this: I’ve learned a LOT about the legal system in this country and how the rich manage to manipulate it to their advantage, thanks to him. Donny is OLD. He’s been “working the system,” as the saying goes, for a long, long time. He knows just about every trick. Supposedly, has to post a bond in the amount due for each trial he wants to appeal. In most states, bankruptcy can delay judgement payments but not discharge them. Will someone lend him money? I mean, he’s now been officially adjudicated a liar and a fraudster. Who’s going to part with a half-BILLION dollars to a known scallywag?

I’ll tell you this: Letitia James landed a big, hard blow on that tiny, little snowflake. She certainly staggered him – but she didn’t knock him out…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wonder how MAGA feels about their man Vladimir Putin today. Do they still love him for being the “strongman” or have they noticed, yet, that “strongmen” often kill their political opponents, like Vlad just did to Alexei Navalny? Navalny ran a long standing campaign against Putin for years and years. At one point, Navalny escaped Russia and kept taking pot-shots at Putin from a distance. Putin’s people found him and poisoned him, nearly killing him. He survived, though. THEN, the dude went BACK to Russia and filed to run against Putin in an election.

So, Putin did what Trump wants to do. He tossed his political rival – Navalny – in prison on what most of the world saw as trumped up charges. Navalny managed to keep up the attacks so Putin had him moved to a FAR north gulag, where they could kill him slowly and without any prying eyes. And they did. They say he died after a “fall at the Arctic penal colony where he was being held.” A LOT of Putin’s political critics die from sudden, unexpected “falls” these days. I guess gravity is cheaper – and easier to administer – than poison. Currently, the State is refusing to produce the body.

The thing about dictators is that murdering people they don’t like is a common arrow in their quivers. It’s not just Putin. Duterte did it. Erdogan does it. Xi does it. They ALL do it. Hell, Idi Amin used to EAT his opponents. I suspect MAGA thinks dictators are a great idea because they think they’re safe from the dictator’s wrath. I don’t think they understand, well, anything, really, but they seem to miss the idea that ANYBODY can become the enemy of a dictator, at ANY time, for ANY reason. Sometimes, all you need to be is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the book ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ the protagonist, Guy Montag, lives in a dictatorial society, based on Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at the time it was written, and realizes at one point that he’s on the wrong side. He runs for his life, at night. He loses the helicopter chasing him but watches on television as the cops in the chopper kill “him.” The public had been tuned in to the chase, see, so they could know that opposition to the State was a bad idea. When Montag lost the helicopter, the State had to produce results anyway, so they gunned down a silhouetted figure, insisting they got their guy. Weirdly, I’ve always felt badly for that character we never even met, except to see him die. He just lived his life, likely followed all the rules, but died anyway in a misguided show of strength on the part of the State.

I’ll tell you this: MAGA should look more closely at the dictator state they think they want. It doesn’t usually go really well for the masses…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So that’s it. That’s everything that came out this Fri – wait, what? Oh, yeah. It also looks like Willis is winning and the House MAGA are losing, but you’ve got things to do and so do I. Let’s look at those tomorrow…