At 448 pages, the Mueller report is tough sledding, described as hard to read “as a terms of service” document.  Insider has solved that problem for you.  They hired Mark Bowden, a journalist and author who wrote “Black Hawk Down,” “Killing Pablo,” and “Hue 1968.”  They also hired an artist who illustrates graphic novels.  Bowden took the entire Mueller report and supporting documents to masterfully write a narrative description, complete with illustrations, of the findings of the Mueller report.  The read is long, but a page turner.  If you want to understand the stunning story of Trump’s criminality and horrible conduct, this is it.

This is a must read, and a must share story.

His Orangeness’ tweet storm this morning:

Look at that second tweet.  As Trump rants about “Presidential Harassment”, “Fake News”, “Witch Hunt Hoax”, he also makes a Freudian slip saying, “And now Russia disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.”  Trump has just acknowledged that indeed it’s true that Russia assisted him into office.  Trump is now in an interesting position…he has denied Russian involvement since it happened, but now he’s saying that it did, but he’s not going to do anything about it.  That can only mean that he’s hoping the Russians do it again.  I don’t believe that statement quite meets the standard of “protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States”, but that’s just me.

I’m getting close to changing my mind on impeachment of this son of a bitch, but not yet.

Normal people have gone from laughter to shock to anger to abject fear of the Trump presidency as his reality television drama has torn at the very fabric of our society for almost 2 years since he was inflicted upon us by voters who are idiots.  I worked in New York during the eighties when Trump was a punch line, the target of derision and anger over his trashy gold plated branding and real estate failures.  Many New Yorkers called him Donald Chump.

How did he go from laughingstock to the most powerful job in the world?  In one word, television.  Were it not for The Apprentice, Trump would still be relegated to the pages of tabloids like the Enquirer and the Daily Post.  The Apprentice used trumped up drama (no pun intended), manufactured qualifications, fake controversies, and personal destruction of contestants as a formula to transform Trump from widely known failure to a successful businessman.

Who accomplished this seemingly impossible feat?  His name is Mark Burnett, who invented the first major reality television series, Survivor, in 2000 and then The Apprentice a couple of years later.  After meeting Trump Burnett identified him as the perfect character around which to build a fake “successful” businessman who ruled over contestants each week.  Burnett called it the “Urban Survivor”.  The formula worked, and the rest is our nightmare today.  The New Yorker has just profiled Burnett, and the article reads like a…wait for it…reality television show.

So, if you want to blame someone for the train wreck that is now our daily reality, here’s the guy.

Until 1968, Democratic Party bosses picked its candidates.  In 1968, Eugene McCarthy, who had won the most primaries, was pushed aside when party bosses picked Humphrey.  As we all know, Nixon beat Humphrey, which began our long national nightmare which ended in scandal and Nixon’s resignation in 1974.  In 1970, the party became democratic by giving the votes to the rank and file, but in 1972, the party nominated McGovern, who was slaughtered in 49 states by Nixon.  That’s when party bosses seized power again by inventing superdelegates, who had an outsized role in selecting candidates.  That outsized role was used to the extreme in 2016, which resulted in the second long national nightmare, the Trump era.  That happened when Hillary erected a huge wall of money and used that money to vacuum up almost all super delegates before the primaries even started in 2016, she abused Democratic Party rules to destroy the fundamental principle of our country – democracy.

Since the 2016 electoral disaster, the left side of the party has been at war with party leaders to get rid of superdelegates.  This weekend, they won a major battle when the DNC voted to reform the superdelegate system.  That reform took away the vote of superdelegates in the first vote in a contested convention. What that means is that if a candidate has enough votes to win the nomination without the superdelegates, they can vote.  If it hasn’t been decided yet, they have to wait on the sidelines on the first ballot.  This change, while not pure reform, is huge.  No longer can another candidate, like Hillary, use the party structure to suppress the vote of the rank and file before the primaries even start.  Because of this reform, party bosses like Donna Brazile, who had opposed the change are not happy.  Leaders like Karen Carter Peterson of Louisiana were outraged that their power to destroy democracy was being taken away.  Addressing the rules committee she said, “Are you telling me that I’m going to go to a convention, after my 30 years of blood sweat and tears for this party, that you’re going to take away my right?”  Well, Karen, if you mean your right to force your will over the voters, the answer is that you’re goddam right we’re taking away your right.  You abused that right, so now the people have taken that privilege away from you.  Welcome to democracy.

How do you like ‘dem apples?

There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.

File under You Can’t Make This Up:

It started a few days ago in RW Nutjob Land (I never link to RW Nutjob sites, so you’ll have to find it yourself), but this story has legs and deserves covering.  This story is about Tad Devine who was…wait for it…Bernie Sanders chief strategist during the 2016 election.  Devine is a long-time advisor and strategist for Democratic candidates, even being senior advisor to both Al Gore and John Kerry for their presidential runs.  He’s also been an international political consultant, (and this is where it gets weird), he partnered with Paul Manafort to advise Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian backed strongman who is now in exile in Russia after being removed from power in 2014 for corruption and suppression of protests and the press.

What’s really bad for Devine (and us) is that Mueller’s most recent indictment contains many exhibits of communication between Devine and Manafort, and even Russian-born Konstantin Kilimnik, who is under indictment by Mueller.  This association feeds the rumors that Sanders was part of a vast conspiracy by the Russians to get Hillary.  No one knows yet if that storyline is true, but it damn sure looks bad;  it’s unknown if the Russians had some inroad into Sanders campaign, but there is certainly a possible onramp.  This one will be interesting to follow.

There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.