You can read the US Attorney’s announcement here. Bannon, et al were indicted for defrauding tens of thousands of donors to a crowd funded scam of “We Build the Wall” that collected $25 million.  Bannon and his partners are accused of funneling over $1.5 million to themselves through fake invoices and dummy non-profits.  Bannon himself took $1 million.  The DOJ has got them dead to rights.  Maybe they’ll try to get Bannon to flip on Trump for some unrelated charge, but as JJ said, expect pardons for these thieves.

Last weekend, “senior advisor” Jared Kushner made the Sunday morning talkshow circuit arrogantly crowing about his own negotiating prowess after Trump announced the surprise Middle East “peace” agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Welp, now we know how that got done…the New York Times is reporting that Trump has made a quiet behind the scenes agreement with the UAE to sell them F-35 stealth fighters and advanced technology drones.  They’re going to use those weapons to threaten…wait for it…Israel.  So, let’s be clear – Jared’s excellent negotiating skill he took credit for last Sunday was actually father in law’s bribery to get the UAE to sign on the dotted line, get a favorable headline, and, BTW, to throw Israel under the bus.

That’s called quid pro quo, just like he tried out with Ukraine, Stormy Daniels, and Roger Stone.  Yeah, it’s that bad.

We have now been in isolation for 129 days while the president and the morons in Austin spin gossamer tales and fantastical fantasies ignoring the simplicity of science.  As Neil deGrass Tyson famously said, “The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.”  Cases of Coronavirus have exploded in not only Texas, but other red states like Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and Oklahoma.  Even California continues to be threatened due to the idiocy of some of its populace.

Those of us at most risk try to protect ourselves while our leaders do nothing to actually do anything to help.  I’ve never felt so exposed to risk since my draft lottery in 1971 during the horror of the war Viet Nam.  I have no confidence in our state government, and certainly not in the federal government that has devolved into a fascist regime run by criminals and screwballs.  And while all this is crashing down around our ears, what is Trump doing?  Besides firebombing by tweet, he’s sending out federal agents in unidentified combat uniforms carrying weapons of war and driving in unmarked vehicles to attack peaceful protestors against the very violence these stormtroopers are committing.  Against the orders of state and local authorities, Trump has sent these goons in for his own political purposes, trying to appear powerful in the face of his own abject ignorance and weakness.  The result?  Peaceful protests have become violent, turned so by the very agents Trump has declared are there to enforce the peace.  Last night, the mayor of Portland was actually gassed by federal goons in unmarked uniforms while he was speaking to his own people.

This. Is. Enough.  We all know the mental and moral state of the most corrupt president in US history.  He doesn’t care if you live or die, and has actually become the leading cause of death in the US after his unimaginable recklessness and gross negligence as the pandemic exploded in our country during the last six months.  Trump’s most recent assault on American’s constitutional rights and common decency by his unidentified goons has been exposed by Reuters and the Lawfare blog, showing documents that articulate a strategy of “protecting” monuments and federal property from “violent criminals” in America’s cities.  Of course, that’s not at all what they’re actually doing.  What they’re actually doing is starting violence where no violence existed in order to justify Trump expanding this to other cities to cause more violence to give Trump the excuse to expand…you get the drill.

All of this effort was organized in secret by Trumpists in the WH and “acting” officials in the DHS.  It’s designed in such a way that its secrecy makes it almost impossible to exercise oversight by the Congress.  This operation certainly requires funding by illegally using money appropriated for other purposes.  And all this is happening with McConnell laying down and allowing Trump to do what he wants, when he wants as he destroys what’s left of our democracy.

To summarize – Trump is violating the Constitution, federal laws, and two centuries of practice in not using federal forces on its own people.  DHS was founded as a knee-jerk reaction to the 911 attacks.  The problem is that having DHS consolidates too much authority in too few officials with not enough oversight by the legislative and judicial branches.  The DHS must be broken up post haste.  I know that won’t happen any time soon, but this is just one more righting of a wrong on the list of thousands of wrongs that must be fixed after we fumigate the WH and the Senate.

Roger Stone, Trump’s self described chief dirty trickster, has just had his sentence commuted by The President of the United States Don Donaldo Trumps, freeing him from paying the price for colluding with Russians, slandering political opponents and violating virtually every modicum of common decency and then lying to the DOJ about it. Let’s be clear here: Roger Stone colluded with Wiki Leaks founder Julian Assange to disclose thousands of emails stolen from DNC and staff emails to damage Hillary Clinton in 2016.  He also participated in operations to slander Clinton and others.  THEN, he lied to the DOJ about his activities.  In an act of abject corruption (once again) Trump commuted Stone’s sentence to protect him from justice.

This corruption must not stand.  Come January 20, 2021, the jails must be opened for those who have violated the public trust and made millions on the backs of honest Americans.

Donald Trump is a dumbass.  We all know that.  He’s also narcissistic, cruel, self obsessed, and utterly devoid of human emotion.  We’ve come to expect the worst in him through pure personal experience.  Now let’s look at Greg Abbott; he graduated from UT and Vanderbilt Law.  He served on the Texas Supreme Court and as Attorney General of Texas.  Greg Abbott is smart.  His problem is that he’s also a partisan hack.  He sued a tree trimming company after a tree fell on him after a storm, paralyzing him from the waist down resulting in an insurance settlement that pays him for life, though he can freely practice law.  After he got his, of course, he spent years trying to undo the very system that supported him when injured.  That makes him a hack, and a hypocrite.  But he’s worse than that.  As governor since 2015, he’s continued Rick Perry’s dismantling of Texas reputation for good education and a fair government.  He’s participated in the culture wars and even sicced the Texas State Guard on the US Army after goofy conspiracy theorists raised hell about how the military exercises are going to “take away their guns”.  It was stupid, and he knew better, but still pandered to screwballs.  He’s now continued that pandering all the way through Trump’s disastrous presidency, and now Texans are actually dying because of that pandering.

Against all common sense and medical experts, Abbott ordered the reopening of businesses and government agencies even though no criteria for reopening had been met.  Trump called for immediate reopening to save his reelection bid, and Abbott happily complied.  He even overruled safety precautions put in place in cities all over the state.  The result?  COVID-19 cases have overwhelmed the hospital systems; medical staff is either exhausted or sick themselves.  People are dying waiting for a hospital bed, or at home, terrified to come to a hospital. Yesterday, Texas hit a new record of over 11,000 new cases and 131 deaths, overwhelming the previous death record by over 100%.  Total deaths since the beginning of this disaster now total over 3,000.

This catastrophe is all on Abbott, period the end.  When he overruled adults like Sylvester Turner and Lina Hidalgo, he took the entire responsibility on himself.  The real tragedy?  Unlike Trump, Abbott is not a dumbass; he knows better.  He’s just a corrupt and cynical politician, and this year should spell the end of his political career and a place in polite society (if that even exists anymore).

As we’ve already reported, the Texas Medical Center halted reporting all COVID-19 data after some kind of agreement with Greg Abbott to continue allowing elective surgeries even after his statewide order that shut down those elective surgeries to free hospital capacity for infected patients.  TMC halted that reporting just as it reached 100% base capacity and forecast overrunning surge capacity in days.

Well, TMC started reporting the data again last night, but OMITTED ICU and hospital capacity data.  A before and after example is below.  Doctors in

Before and After

TMC have been ringing the alarm bells for weeks, and management was accurately reporting data and also sounding the alarm until everything stopped Thursday.  The Houston Chronicle has now picked up the story as well as other local media.  Frankly, this entire episode is shameful; corruption has moved from Austin and the governor’s mansion to the largest medical center in the world.

Our legacy will be determined by how we respond to this crisis.  I’m not hopeful as the cancer of Trump has metastasized from Queens to Houston.