A long one. Collusion, conspiracy, corruption - and the one absolutely undeniable fact about Donald Trump.

First a quick announcement:  My uplift novel Brightness Reef - beginning to answer your many questions from Startide Rising and The Uplift War - is now on sale at BookBub! And on ebook daily and Bargains. Ideas galore, an awards nominee and Michael Whelan cover, all for just $2.99.

"Refugees from six alien races - including strange "earthlings" -have made their home on the forbidden planet Jijo… but a mysterious starship may soon determine their fate, linking it to chaos in the Five Galaxies."

Now on to a nation and world so weird it might be Serling's The Twilight Zone, or Heinlein's The Crazy Years. This will be a long one, in hope that some of you can use bits as weapons against the madness. 

But action speaks louder than blogs! The most-effective thing you can do in a red or purple state is find a nearby swing district for State Assembly or State Senate and work for that candidate.  It's where the fight is most important. It's where one more volunteer could make a difference and the candidate may remember your name!  And if you live in a deep blue state and district? Well, then seriously. Money. Now.

== The Undeniables ==

Let's put aside for now the furor obsessing everyone else -- the Brett Kavanaugh mess -- which has artfully served the political purposes of Rupert Murdoch and the Fox cabal. As evidenced by a rise in electoral enthusiasm on the far-right base. Terrified of a blue wave, they need that base to come out, bringing vote tallies close enough to tip over with cheating.

You will not win over your mad uncle with arguments about Brett Kavanaugh's youthful crimes or indiscretions, or even last week's smorgasbord of lies, under oath. No, you must turn to facts which are so clear, so self-evident that Fox doesn't even try to come up with magical incantations against them, only distractions.

Call these pure bullets "The Undeniables," in a blatant riff off of the Untouchables. Here's a powerful one:

For a fellow who brags that he is a great judge of people, who “always picks the best,” and who puts loyalty (to him) above all, Donald Trump sure winds up hating on his appointees and staff and counselors. 

I mean, it’s almost Shakespearean how often he plaintively howls: “I’ve been betrayed!” I would put money that he has been "betrayed" by more appointees and staff in the last year than any ten or twenty presidents in U.S. history, combined. Perhaps all of them, combined.

Now, any one case may be an honest mistake. One or two or three appointees or aides might be suborned by the Deep State, or 'bribed by the Clintons,' or prove unworthy of the "Best!" title that DT hands out like candy. But seriously, even if your MU (mad uncle) adores everything Two Scoops rails at rallies, don't we know by now that he's an awful judge of character? 

Ponder something scary in this context. His "falling in love" with Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin and other dictators, just for having flattered him. 

It's an undeniable.

== Why does nothing change their loyalty? ==

In contrast to DT's appointees, the topmost endearing trait of our conservative neighbors is loyalty. It's handy when you need to borrow a lawnmower or get help against a zombie horde! Alas, they've been coaxed into giving tribal devotion not to the world, the future, their children or America, but to a narrow partisanship that portrays black as always black. White as always white. (And take that as you like.)

As things progress with the Mueller probe - or the Kavanaugh Offshoot - another tactic that sometimes works on a RASR (Residually Adult-Sane Republican) but not on a mad uncle is: WODI: "What if Obama had Done It?" 

So now Donald Trump tries to order a halt to those investigating him? (As Nixon did.) Imagine the shrieks if Clinton/Obama tried that? Dig this well. Half a billion dollars of mostly our money was spent — across 25 years — investigating them, the most thoroughly probed humans in history. Every document scrutinized, every micro assistant grilled or offered "whistleblower rewards." Half of all subpoenas issued by GOP Congresses were for that futile, desperate search. But Clinton/Obama never demanded the investigations stop.

Okay, you've seen some of this rant before: George Bush diverted federal investigators from anti-terror duties, before 9/11 (which should have been a huge scandal) to sift every federal filing cabinet for some smoking gun. Fox offered lucrative commentator posts. And what did we wind up with? A husband fibbed about some third base adult-consensual infidelity in a hallway... and the wife was caught using exactly the same sort of email system as Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Mike Pence, George Bush and Jared Kushner. 

That's... it. Zero indictments or convictions. Zero aides "ratting out."

Compare that to Mueller already filing almost a hundred charges against almost two score individuals with confessions and convictions already piling up. And that leaves out secret meetings with hostile dictators, ongoing acts-of-war against our elections and infrastructure, and top GOP tiers filled with pedophiles, drunken frat-boys, playmate-bribers, casino-mafiosi, kremlin-stooges and monopolists.

Now Fox howls against our 250,000 loyal professionals in the FBI, Intelligence Agencies and US military officer corps, as part of open war against every fact-centered profession. And every national strength that won us the Cold War is being systematically demolished, as if by an enemy occupier.

WODI?

Okay then, shall we switch to MAGA? Ponder the Greatest Generation that defeated Hitler, contained communism, built the great American Middle Class, joined strong unions, broke up monopolies, built strong alliances... and adored FDR. And now comes supporting hard evidence from the Evonomics site. "They Go Together: Freedom, Prosperity, and Big Government: Countries with larger government sectors tend to have more personal freedom."

But worst of all... what a whiner! The U.S. president with a friendly Congress and Court , moans daily that "the government" is after him in order to ... to show the people what's been hidden from them. That's it. "Stop revealing stuff!"

WODI. You wanted a birth certificate? How about you release the tax returns. Better yet, tell the IRS to verify that there's an 'audit'... at all.

== Hiding which foreigners gave $100 million to... the NRA? ==

In this article, Michelle Goldberg ponders the “servility of congressional Republicans before a president many of them hate and believe to be compromised by a foreign power. Yes, I know they’re thrilled about tax cuts and judges. Given how Russia has become a patron of the right globally over the last decade, some Republicans might welcome its intervention into our politics, believing that the Democrats are greater enemies of the Republic. And some are just cowards, afraid of mean tweets or base blowback.

“But that doesn’t explain why, for example, Speaker Paul Ryan, a Russia hawk who is retiring in January, allowed his party to torpedo the House Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian interference in the election. Ryan, after all, knows full well who and what Donald Trump is. In a secretly recorded June 2016 conversation about Ukraine, obtained by The Washington Post, the House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, said, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” Far from disagreeing, Ryan said, “What’s said in the family stays in the family.” If he were patriotic — or even if he just wanted to set himself up for a comeback should Trump implode — he would have stood up for the rule of law in the Russia inquiry. It’s hard to see what he got in return for choosing not to.”

Goldberg goes on to ponder preliminary evidence for what may have them terrified… that the corruption goes deep, e.g. the House GOP voted to shut down all hearings about  Russia / NRA connections. That same week, the Trump Administration suddenly issued rules allowing the NRA to keep secret their sources of major foreign funding.

“The N.R.A.’s political spending increased by more than $100 million in 2016." Um, are your neighbors even slightly curious where that money came from?

Want more irony? One of the few Republicans going into these matters is George F. Will, syndicated columnist and man whom I call “the worst American.”  Not because he is one of the craven toadies – he’s not. In fact, most of his recent articles are cogent and make excellent ammo for you to use, in peeling away one or two residually sane American conservatives from the  Murdochian treason.

==  They used the left against us… now it’s the right ==

More undeniables. The Kremlin and KGB remain the same, With the same goal, to undermine the western experiment in open-fair-accountable rule of law. This enlightening article compares Moscow's current cozy support of the U.S. radical right to their 1930s subversion via the American far-left. There are no essential differences. Indeed, some of the very same men are using some of the very same methods against us, as they did back when they wore hammer-and-sickle pins and sang the Internationale.

This time, though "it’s not a proletarian revolution. Instead, it’s a kleptocratic coup d’état: The modern Kremlin project seeks to undermine Western democracies, break up the E.U. and NATO, and put corrupt relationships rather than the rule of law at the center of international commerce."

Another excerpt: "Precisely because the analogy is so exact, it’s worth remembering why Golos and his network failed. In large part, it was because the center-left — especially the anti-Soviet wing of the American trade union movement — rejected Soviet-style communism in the United States. It’s also because, in the 1940s and 1950s, the American political establishment, Democratic and Republican, unified around the need to defeat Soviet-style communism in Europe. And it’s because, even in the depths of the Depression, the majority of Americans were never beguiled by the appeal of authoritarianism.'

Indeed, as I point out elsewhere, the most powerfully anti-communist element in the US was the American labor movement... the AFL-CIO etc., which pushed for containment of the USSR, not just isolationism. It was the Greatest Generation - and their favorite living person, FDR - who won the fight against extremism of right and left and led us into the most productive and free era in history.

But back to Anne Applebaum: "It’s not at all clear that we are in the same situation now. A wing of the Republican Party is preparing to double down and support the Russian autocracy, which it believes, mistakenly, is “Christian.” While the Pentagon and parts of the bureaucracy — the State Department, the FBI — certainly understand the need to push back in Europe, the White House certainly does not. Which side the Republican Party will end up on is anybody’s guess."

Oh, we are past guessing. It is down to individual Republicans, now. If just one million of them decide to turn away from Rupert Murdoch's raving-traitorous teat and rejoin an advanced, adult, scientific, fact-centered, compassionately practical civilization, then we'll prove we are not lesser men and women than our forebears, but worthy of the title, citizens.

== Hack the voter ==

On his estimable blog site - Stonekettle Station - combat veteran and man of many rural virtues, Jim Wright, powerfully skewers the alt-right, infowars insanities and treasons. For example, from his posting Critical Path:

“Information Warfare can, and is, used as a primary warfare area, as powerful or more so than any bomb. I've done it myself in combat. But when used in this manner, as the Russians are using it against us right now, it is a warfare support function. An enhancer. A force multiplier, one that makes other weapons, both kinetic and political, work better.

“You don't need to hack election machines, if you can hack the voter. You don't need to hack democracy if you can hack the citizen. You don't need to physically destroy the United States if you can make Americans distrust the fundamental institutions of their own republic.

“If you show that the election machines are vulnerable before the election and you do so in a manner that is purposely detectable – that you know will be detected and thus reported hysterically to the population by the target’s own media -- then you don't have to hack the actual elections themselves. You only have to show that you can.”

His postings are long but riveting and less frequent than my endless firehose. Jim Wright continues:

“You don’t have to destroy America, when Americans are willing to do it for you.

“Now, the most effective countermeasure in this particular example should be obvious. Secure the election. By whatever means necessary secure the election, paper ballots, secure isolated non-networked machines, validated public audits, whatever methodology of validation and integrity is most provable to the population. Instead of closing voting stations, open more. Get citizens to polls. Make it easier for the population to vote, not harder.”

If the Democrats win the House, no other priority should be higher, and we must put fire to the feet of the waffling “human” GOP senators like Collins and Murkowski. 

And if they have any sense, they will expand this by passing my FACT ACT.

Heck, we could do much worse than to have some rambunctious new congress-critter summon, as a vital aide, Jim Wright.

== More than a bit of hypocrisy ==

Those claiming that the president's acknowledged immaturity, narcissism and moral turpitude are "irrelevant" should read these op-eds by Mike Pence, back during the MonicaGate Scandal (so charmingly limited in scope.) Pence wrote:

"If you and I fall into bad moral habits, we can harm our families, our employers and our friends. The President of the United States can incinerate the planet. Seriously, the very idea that we ought to have at or less than the same moral demands placed on the Chief Executive that we place on our next door neighbor is ludicrous and dangerous. Throughout our history, we have seen the presidency as the repository of all of our highest hopes and ideals and values. To demand less is to do an injustice to the blood that bought our freedoms." It’s unclear whether Pence still believes what he wrote in his old essays. Trump is accused of multiple extramarital affairs and coverups with hush money payments. And he was recorded bragging about sexually assaulting women."

You can bet that when ... not if... Pence replaces his boss, he will claim there's no hypocrisy! That he had been merely biding his time and sing hosannas that a decent man is in office! And fools will rush to proclaim relief, unaware that our danger will then multiply a thousand fold.

== After- thoughts ==

Some readers of this web-log send in cogent observations. For example, one of you pointed out: “Trump has spent an order of magnitude more of OUR money playing golf than Mueller's investigation has cost so far. And much of that golfing money got funneled back to him because he's charging us to have his security detail and entourage stay at properties he owns. The levels of corruption and graft are staggering.”

Another made a cogent observation about the recent Helsinki summit.  “In meeting Putin, Trump did not act in the capacity as a private person, but rather as the official representative of the United States (all expenses paid by U.S citizens). Then why do we not have an official record of the meeting? No president since Washington ever made ‘agreements’ with a foreign power, let alone a hostile one, without some transparency, records, and involvement by skilled professionals.”

Well, I can think of one time. Though Ronald Reagan was not yet president when he secretly agreed with the Ayatollahs to keep Americans hostage till he was elected and inaugurated.

The whole trend on the right is toward Private Armies. Blackwater and so on. And any U.S. conservative who has not noticed all this and realized where it leads, should consider carefully. 

With the greatest leader above them,

people barely know one exists.

Next comes one whom they love and praise.

Next comes one whom they fear.

Next comes one whom they despise and defy.

When a leader trusts no one,

no one trusts him.

The great leader speaks little.

He never speaks carelessly.

He works without self-interest

and leaves no trace.

When all is finished, the people say

“We did it ourselves.”

Lao-tzu

Tao Te Ching