So…the presumptive nominee for the Roepublicon Party underwent his presentence probationary interview this last week. The interview is part of the sentencing process. It helps the judge gauge certain aspects of the defendant’s (now the convicted person’s) attitude. DOES Trump feel any remorse? Not based on any of his words. According to him, the fault lies, not with his crimes but with the people who punished him for them. He even sent out fundraising emails calling the conviction a “fraud.” That’s hardly contrition.

Apparently, they asked him if he understood that as a convicted Felon on probation, he wouldn’t be allowed to associate with other known criminals, specifically, people with criminal convictions. That pretty much lets out everyone Trump knows at this point. It seems to be a thing, hang with Trump, go to jail…

But his hearing was rather unusual; more of that Special Treatment he’s always bitching about. He got to do his interview via Zoom. He got to have his attorney present. His interview lasted a little less than a half-hour. NONE of that is, apparently, standard practice…

Weird, isn’t it? The impending election pits one guy who, yes, is old against the other guy who is ALSO old AND can’t travel freely around the world due to his status as a felon and will have to weave his criminal probation into his Presidency, wants to impose a far-right, extremist agenda, did a terrible job when he had it before, and fully intends to dismantle the Constitution. And millions of Americans are STILL voting for the second guy. I just don’t get what’s wrong with people…

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Oh, but the cons got Hunter, didn’t they? Everyone was so shocked, so surprised. Wait, no. That’s not right. Hunter had already indicated his guilt. The prosecutor investigating the case had looked at it and offered a plea bargain. MAGA couldn’t have that, just a plea bargain. Never mind that a plea bargain is the same sentence offered others in similar cases. This is Hunter Biden and they have to get Joe! (Dear MAGA, Hunter is STILL not Joe. If you need a President with a drug problem, look to your beloved Donny…)

They knew they could drag embarrassing details about drug addict choices out in public and put it in a court record somewhere, as though court records aren’t already full of the stupid things drug addicts do. Of course, after the conviction, MAGA was ready with all new conspiracy theories, freshly minted by their bullshit machine and injected into the body politic for ready rhetorical use. Suddenly, Hunter’s conviction was a set-up by – wait for it – JOE BIDEN! That senile old man is one clever and crafty son-of-a-bitch, isn’t he?

See, according to this insane conspiracy theory, the (stupid) plan was to convict Hunter for a petty crime, which naturally and automatically, of course, covers up all the vast web of crimes out there that Joe is committing and MAGA knows everything about but can NOT (for some weird reason) come up with a single shred of evidence for proof. So fear not, featherheads, the “investigations” will continue. They know Joe is guilty. All they have to do is find a crime now. Easy…

There is a song out in “Christian” media calling Donald Trump, ‘The Chosen One.’ Donald didn’t write it but he promoted it. The Chosen One? Isn’t that title already taken in the Christian religion? I believe it’s held by a guy named…um…Oh, Jesus Christ, what IS that guy’s name? Oh yeah, Jesus Christ.

So the next time you’re out there, scratching your head, wondering how MAGA can stay so loyal to this international criminal buffoon, remember that song. They believe he’s the next coming and they’ll support him as such. What a bunch of rubes…

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Here’s a question: if Donald Trump is as popular as he says he is, why is he faking photos to show huge crowds? Shouldn’t he just be drawing huge crowds? When a thousand people show up, he claims 100,000. Recently, he released a campaign photo showing a huge crowd and suggested the crowd was at his rally. But it wasn’t. The crowd he showed was from a local music festival – where Trump wasn’t.

As a sidebar, he had a rally in Las Vegas, where he told his fans that he didn’t care about them, he just wanted their votes. To be specific, he said, “We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote.” He said he was kidding and the crowd laughed. But he wasn’t kidding, was he? He FINALLY tells a truth, and it’s an insult to his base. But, they’re still “the uneducated” and they didn’t get it. “Oh, idn’t he funny?”

If he’s lying about crowd size every chance he gets – and he is – why wouldn’t he lie about all the other amazing “successes” he’s experiencing, like how much money he’s bringing in from donors (to pay his legal and living expenses and get Melania $8,000 dollar haircuts)?

Oh, yeah, he’s also claiming something like 22% of under-50 African Americans are Trump supporters. I heard Raphael Warnock (D, Georgia) on the radio. Warnock insists there’s no way 22% of under-50 African Americans are voting Trump. I believe Warnock, not Trump. Especially since Trump keeps getting caught faking photos trying to show how much the African American community loves him. Once again, if you have to fake it, how true could it be?

I’ll tell you this: It turns out, the sexually assaulting, convicted felon, and international criminal Donald J. Trump might be a liar, too…

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I don’t know if it’s better or worse that Europe is also suffering a surge in far-right conservatism. Better because it means we’re not alone here in the US. It usually helps to know others have experienced something someone is going through. The panic on the left at the rise of backwards, ineffective thinking in the US can be felt by the left all over Europe.

Worse because it means the far-right propaganda machine is working much of the western world and making great strides. I believe I’ll NEVER understand how so many millions of people can be so deceived, so completely, for so long. But I’m watching it happen right now, with my own eyes, and it doesn’t matter if I believe it or not. It’s happening.

The general thinking among those who still do (think, that is) is that the rise in far-right conservatism is going to make it much harder to govern Europe, just as they’ve mucked up the political process here in the US. In France, the far-right showed so many gains, their President, Emmanuel Macron, dissolved their national Parliament and called for a snap legislative election, a kind of electoral re-do. Honestly? I can’t decide how I feel about that. It doesn’t feel very democratic. The election was the election. The people spoke. If they spoke in the manner of brain-dead morons, so be it.

On the other hand, the people supporting those movements in country after country are doing so because they’ve been deceived by a sophisticated propaganda machine and they don’t have the tools (or, in some cases, the capacity) to identify the deceptions. SHOULD a country suffer under the weight of wrongheadedness just because a large number of people were fooled? If there’s legal method for an instant re-do, shouldn’t they? I’d guess that if such a thing had been possible in the UK when Brexit happened, the Brits might have jumped at the chance for a do-over.

It’s weird. We’re watching a battle between informed and uninformed – and uninformed is winning…

People seem to be closing their wallets. FINALLY! We keep hearing about “inflation,” and the cost of living IS going up. A LOT! But it’s not structural inflation, it’s greed and price gouging. The core drivers of the “inflation” are housing costs – being driven up by Wall Street investors – and fuel – as always, driven by greed.

But people have been spending anyway. They got used to easy credit and easy debt. The recent rate increases seem to be having the desired effect. That debt ain’t so easy any more and people are getting worried. Where I live, the wine industry is, well, pretty much everything these days. They’re suffering. People are eschewing the wineries (and their prices) for off-the-shelf stuff. I heard ‘Target’ is going to cut prices on something like 1,200 items. That’s an indicator. People aren’t buying. Spending is down, revenues are down. Now, in a natural turn of events, prices will start coming down, too.

But not in housing and not in fuel. As long as Wall Street can buy the houses, the cost will continue to skyrocket. Gas companies just gouge. It’s what they do. Prices at the pump here in California were making their way steadily to $6.00/gallon but the state legislature passed a law, here, that allows them to look into cost increases – and punish the companies if such a look finds the increases were just based in greed. So, as the prices started going up and up, a state politician said, out loud, ‘maybe we should look into those gas prices.’ They dropped the next day. Funny how that works…

Now there’s an entire movement out there, a “no-buy year,” in which participants buy only essentials. I doubt such a thing will go widespread in our consumer society but it won’t take a lot of people for an impact that can make a difference.

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Trump called Robert De Niro a failed actor. De Niro is anti-Trump and makes no bones about it. He spoke outside the courtroom where Trump’s criminal trial is under way. Someone tried to heckle him and he shut the guy down. Trump claimed De Niro had run into a “force far greater than the radical left – MAGA!” I saw the exchange. I thought De Niro won the moment. Just one opinion, though.

Donald J. Trump is the thinnest skinned snowflake I’ve ever even heard about.

I keep getting new favorite bits of this process. The most recent was when a spokesperson for Trump came out in front of the press, complaining that the left was trying to turn the trial “into a campaign event.” Let’s just ignore how the trump campaign has raised money off of the trial and used the press draw as free advertising where the defendant in a criminal trial is allowed to hold court and speechify on nearly whatever topic enters his diseased mind.

Trump claims he wants to be on the campaign trail. In my view, Trump IS on the campaign trail. So, of course MAGA is pointing the finger at Democrats. But, as always, with MAGA, every accusation is a confession…

To honor the fallen on Memorial day, Trump sent out hate mail. Again. Apparently, that’s how he sees holidays, as a way to hate on his “enemies.” He wrote, “Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country…” And so on and so forth for a rambling while. Hate, anger, revenge, and lies ruled his post, and presumably, his day. In fact, from what I’ve seen hate, anger, revenge, and lies rule his entire life.

It’s not the first time he’s used a holiday to attack people, showing none of the respect the holiday deserves (“Happy Memorial Day?”) and none of the decorum decent human beings expect of those around them…

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Well, closing arguments happened. For hours and hours, they happened. The defense was pretty quick. There’s not much to say when there is no defense.
“That guy’s a liar!” the Defense said, pointing at Cohen. “Don’t trust him.”
“Yeah,” answered the prosecution, “but he’s Trump’s liar. Trump hired him because of the things he’d do. And we’ve shown you corroborating evidence for all of it, remember? There was this and this and that and those and this and that and more of those. Why would you have to rely on Cohen? He just tied it all together for you.”

Did you see how much longer the prosecution’s answer was? That represents how the closing arguments went. The Defense was quick, with nothing to say. The Prosecution took a long time, reviewing the entire case for a jury that had taken a week off between trial and closing.

At one point, the defense got in trouble with the judge, yet again, by asking the jury if they really wanted to send an ex-President to prison. It was an effort to either induce sympathy or produce guilt. Either way, it was a cheap, emotional manipulation. The thing is, the jury doesn’t send anyone to prison. The judge determines the sentence – and I doubt Merchan will give Trump jail time, special treatment being what it is.

Merchan told us as much when Trump kept violating the gag order. Merchan said, out loud, “Mr. Trump, it’s important to understand that the last thing I want to do is to put you in jail. You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president, as well.” He’s SUPPOSED to be a normal citizen, subject to the same laws as anyone else.

MAGA keeps pretending that it’s special treatment that keeps getting in Donald’s way, but it’s really special treatment that has kept him out of jail up until now. So don’t get your hopes up on the whole jail thing. He ain’t going. Merchan has already (kind of) said as much. Still, he’ll be a convicted Felon, unable to vote for himself in November…

The case got to the jury Wednesday, the 29th. They worked on it for several hours. As of this writing? Crickets. Nothing. Nada. (In fairness, it’s been less than one day.) There will be more deliberations today. I presume the jurors want this over with as much as anyone so they’re, likely, not mucking about…

Quick question: will it affect YOUR opinion? I know I’ll accept the verdict, either way. But one way (acquittal or hung jury) will irritate me and the other (guilty) will satisfy me. I would not want to see an innocent man go to jail. Ever. Even the guy promising to destroy the country, if he didn’t do the crime for which he stands accused.

I think the evidence supports the charge, but I’m not in the courtroom. I ALSO think nobody’s opinion about Donald Trump will change one iota. He has already poisoned MAGA’S mind on the matter, pretending Joe Biden is secretly orchestrating the whole thing, which he most assuredly is not. But on the left, we’ve pretty much decided, too. I suspect nothing will change the voter’s positions one little iota.

There’s no amount of evidence one can bring that will change the mind of a MAGA. They don’t WANT to see it so they will NOT see it. (The “NOT sees?”) So, they’ll happily vote for the Felon, if convicted. Hell, by Friday, his conviction will be a badge of honor among MAGA. “I ignored his conviction before anybody else!” Yeah, you did. Hey, we see you…

Wow, Trump’s paranoia has really ramped up recently. Have you heard the one about the paranoid ex-president who claimed the current president tried to have him assassinated? Yeah, there’s no punchline. That’s just Trump’s current, insane message.

See, in MAGA world, the raid on Mar-a-Lago was NOT a legal process to retrieve stolen government documents. It was a big, evil RAID in which, apparently, FBI agents were supposed to kill Trump.

Now, it could be that Trump is just lying to his base. His whole shtick is that he’s some kind of warrior and that everybody – and I DO mean everybody – is out to get him. The perception he wants to leave is that, because he’s still around, he must be a great warrior and nobody has been able to get him. The fact that nobody has even tried never enters into the conversation.

But I’m of the opinion that when you actually and honestly believe that everybody around you is against you and out to get you, that’s paranoia. So, he’s either lying through his lying teeth or he’s suffering from paranoid delusions.

During the execution of that warrant, the FBI had followed a standard use-of-force policy. It prohibits the use of deadly force except when the officer(s) conducting the search has a reasonable belief that the “subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person”. In other words, if someone threatens a law enforcement officer while the officer is executing a warrant, the officer can defend himself.

But you DID catch that bit in there, didn’t you? The part where it prohibits the use of deadly force except to defend themselves. THAT means the FBI wasn’t going in “locked and loaded” as Trump lies and they were specifically NOT “authorized to shoot” him – unless he attacked them first. Interestingly, if his thoughts about perfect presidential immunity were anywhere near true, he wouldn’t be able to stop them if that’s what they were told to do. The FBI is FAR more efficient than Donny’s letting on.

Trump wasn’t even AT Mar-a-Lago the day the warrant was executed and that was by design. Their whole process had been coordinated with the Secret Service. If their goal had been to kill the guy, that’s some terrible planning.
“Hey, we have orders to go to that guy’s house and kill him.”
“When?”
“Sometime when he’s not home seems best…”
“I’ll set it up.”

But, of course, his paranoid rantings could put the lives of FBI agents in danger if some MAGA-minded moron decided to act on Donny’s delusions. So, Jack Smith’s team has asked the judge in the case, Aileen “Loose” Cannon, to stop Trump from making those claims, in view of how false they are and the danger he now poses to FBI agents.

In their filing, they wrote, “Trump’s repeated mischaracterization of these facts in widely distributed messages as an attempt to kill him, his family and secret service agents has endangered law enforcement officers involved in the investigation and prosecution of this case and threatened the integrity of these proceedings.” Cannon pretends she doesn’t understand things so she can make rulings favorable to Donny, so the prosecutors added, “A restriction prohibiting future similar statements does not restrict legitimate speech.”

The problem is, Cannon was nominated to the bench by Trump and she dearly, desperately wants to protect his paranoid, snowflake self. I doubt she’ll grant Smith’s request but it’s yet another log on the fire of her appearance of incompetence. Sooner or later, Smith has to move to force her recusal, and this decision will be part of that action if she ignores reality in favor of her preferred paradigm…

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I really DO NOT like moving house. It’s a LOT of work. One comes face-to-face with all kinds of things one meant to get to, but hasn’t yet. It’s very disruptive to the daily routine. It takes months for life to settle back to some semblance of “normal.”

Nevertheless, that’s what I’m doing. Moving house. Yes, again. The last one was less than two years ago. Some of those boxes were still not unpacked. (That turns out to have been a blessing at this point.) This, of course, is all the result of out-of-control housing costs. We’re combining resources with one of our kids to make life more livable for all of us.

The reason I mention it is, it will likely affect my ability to publish next week. I can’t say for sure. If all goes well, the move might seem seamless (to you) but I have…concerns. So, I’m letting you know that if I don’t publish next Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, it’s because of that. Stay with me. I’ll be back…