We naturally assume we would know when evil exists amongst us. We’ve spent an entire lifetime watching crime drama and law procedurals on television. We watch as master criminals and intuitive investigators battle it out in 42 minutes (not counting the commercials).

We pride ourselves in figuring it out before the actors reciting a script. Occasionally even we are fooled and we chalk it up as another great show and another lesson learned. The clown is never the guilty party. The red herring is exactly that. It can’t be the red herring. That would be too easy.

Except someone has spent their entire life as the red herring. He struck again and told you just enough to land himself in hot water. He disqualified himself again. He openly admitted to crimes in his business and crimes against humanity. He couldn’t be guilty. We’re missing something. It can’t be that easy. It doesn’t follow the right story arc.

In many ways, Mitch McConnell represents the evil we readily relate to. He makes you work a little harder. You have to go back into the recesses of your memory to prove it. In this case, McConnell used the reflexive “blame Biden” approach. It was his fault we left Afghanistan. Except it really wasn’t. We all know that, but we have to work a little harder to get there.

Unfortunately, not all of us know it. Some have the memory of a gold fish. They just keep swimming. There is always a subset that never will remember these things. Trump made the deal that Biden executed. He even openly bragged at the time that Biden wasn’t going to be able to get out of the deal. Just keep swimming.

Maybe these things are just too easy to track. Maybe our minds are just too trained to follow the 42 minute story arc. Maybe we are just too used to working at finding evil that we just ignore it when it is standing in front of us. Maybe we are just trained not to trust the words of our leaders.

It is more likely that it is the story of the frog in a boiling pot. The idea is fairly simple. Throw a frog into a boiling pot and it immediately jumps out. Slowly turn up the heat and it will comfortably cook. While some debate the analogy, there is some thought that humans are no better than the common frog. It goes back to the theory of sunken costs. If I bail now then I somehow have to explain to everyone and myself that all of the stuff before was apparently okay.

So, either I am somewhat deplorable or I’m all in. I have a pair of fours in my hand, but I’ve already thrown twenty bucks into the pot, so what the hell? When you are all in you never have to admit the obvious. You can claim it was all fake news anyway. So, when the evil that tempts all mankind announces himself again you just keep whistling by the graveyard.

The Bad News:  Word is coming out that Parler is back up, but not available to its racist base – yet.

The Worse News: The social media platform has moved to a new web service hosted by…wait for it…the Russian Federation.

Whoa, Nelly!

While we were all watching coverage of the Coronavirus and preparing for the onslaught, Trump’s justice department was moving to drop charges against Russian backed companies indicted by Mueller for financing Russian interference in the 2016 election.  Yes, that is really happening.

The Russians aren’t backing Trump on his story of getting Al Baghdadi, calling his announcement “propaganda”.  The Russian defense ministry says that Russia was not involved and even doubted that the raid killed the actual Al Baghdadi saying that Syria has claimed several times to have already killed him.  The shifting stories between the Pentagon, the White House, and His Orangeness’ mouth has added a lot of doubt to whether the entire tale is actually true or not.

Typical in Trumpland – nothing is clear, and everything is loud.

Pompeo is in Italy with discredited Sebastion Gorka doing God-knows-what.  Bill Barr has been jetting around the world and talking to international leaders.  Rudy Giuliani has been engaged with the Ukrainians for months.  Now we know Pompeo lied on national television on Sunday feigning ignorance of the Zelensky call when, in fact, he was ON THE GODDAM call with Trump.

WTF is going on with all this globe trotting and mysterious meetings with world leaders?  Here’s what I think – Trump’s number one order from Putin was to get the international sanctions lifted from Russia that were imposed after it invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014.  Trump floated lifting sanctions early on, after he infested the WH in 2017, but was slapped down pretty definitively.  Since then, his pandering to Putin is well documented, including trying to tweet Russia back into the G7 to make it the G8 again.  So far, that hasn’t worked either.

Trump’s goal, since dumping Jeff Sessions and gaining Bill Barr as his attorney general personal defender, has been to discredit the investigations that concluded Russia helped get him elected with their hacking and social media meddling.  He’s so obsessed with this mission that he’s ignored the vast majority of his duties as president, focusing only on watching Fox Noise, tweeting insults at enemies in a continuous stream, and trying to help Russia.  His primary effort has been to get Ukraine to dig dirt on Biden AND promoting the ridiculous theory that it wasn’t Russian meddling, but actually Ukraine doing the hacking of the DNC. It’s stupid, but Trump and Giuliani are pushing it hard, since they’ve got nothing else.

Trump sees the end coming, especially as his numbers for reelection have sunk even lower and the impeachment inquiry started heating up.  Lord only knows what kompromat Putin has on Trump, but you know the list is long, including money laundering and financial fraud.  Trump is clearly a Russian asset, and he’s desperately trying to get Russian sanctions lifted before he’s ousted, one way or the other.  The only way he can do that (in his fevered mind) is to discredit the Mueller report and the conclusions of every major intelligence agency in the developed world.  It’s simply not going to happen, but Trump in his addled state is trying to make that happen, and he doesn’t give a good Goddam who or what he burns down trying to accomplish this goal.

Call me crazy, call me conspiratorial, but nothing else, at least to me, explains this nuclear powered three ring circus Trump is orchestrating.

Trump’s done it again, blatantly lying and walking back his idiocy after severe backlash over his shameful performance in Helsinki yesterday.  In a nationally televised statement before a meeting with Congressional leaders, he reversed his entire position from yesterday saying that he now believes Russia DID interfere in our elections and lamely said he had misspoken when he said that “Why would they?” when denying Russia’s involvement.  He now says he meant to say, “Why wouldn’t they?”.

It’s the same old, same old, and doesn’t pass the straight faced test.  God, I’m tired.