Far be it from me to point out the obvious, but there are times when our behaviors don’t have real world consequences. Maybe we leave the stove on. Maybe we forget to lock the door. Maybe someone let the dog out. It doesn’t mean the house always burns down, someone robs you blind, or the dog bites a neighbor. It just means those things are more likely.

Yet, we know these things do happen. We see too many instances on the news to completely write it off. In one breath we talk about how that person should have been more careful and then in another instance we remember that we have likely done the exact same thing.

We experienced this as a country this weekend. We heard a story about the ex-president sharing secret plans with a foreign national and some people immediately pointed out the hyperbole. It couldn’t possibly come back to bite us in the ass. That’s just something that liberals are spouting off about to scare us. There are never really real world consequences. Loose lips don’t really sink ships. That’s just a red herring.

Well, maybe not. The Israelis were under attack this weekend. I’m not going to say it. Don’t listen to me. Let’s listen to the Israelis. They know the ex-president shared their secrets with the Russians. We can connect the dots from there. Let’s dispense with something really quickly. The Russians are not our friends. They have never been our friends. They likely will never be our friends. Their interests almost never align with ours.

Again, I did not connect the dots here. The Israelis did. Trump told Russia. The Russians are closer allies with the Iranians than we certainly are. Everyone we oppose is usually somehow Russia’s friend. So, Trump’s secrets that he got from Israel somehow made it to Iran. The Iranians don’t like the Israelis, so it probably made to Hamas. Again, I repeat that I did not connect those dots. Our right-leaning allies in Israel connected those dots.

So, before we start linking a six billion dollar deal (none of which is U.S. money) to this attack let’s talk about direct consequences and not seven degrees of Kevin Bacon. We already know the intelligence community kept things from Trump. Why did they do this? Well, that episode with the Russians in the oval office is probably exhibit one. That exact exhibit one is at play here. Remember, that is not me just pissing in the wind. The Israelis believe this.

I keep repeating that on purpose. You can certainly question Biden’s policy decisions and everyone is free to do so, but there are not two rational actors in this presidential race. One is a bloviating jackass that can’t be trusted with any actionable intelligence. You’d almost expect the intelligence organizations to give him far fetched and dubious intelligence to just to see if he can embroil Russia in a misinformation campaign. Unfortunately, Putin is smarter than someone you could dupe with an Ethiopian prince scheme.

Let’s get this off to a very basic start. Maybe the guy that kept our government secrets by a toilet shouldn’t be president again. Maybe that guy should be in jail before he can share any more of our government secrets. I know many of us wanted to believe that those loose lips wouldn’t actually cause any real damage. It was a fool’s errand. Loose lips do sink ships. They just don’t sink all of them and they don’t sink them immediately.

Gym Jordan was on MTP this morning babbling about how law enforcement has been weaponized, but only when it comes to conservatives being investigated.  He’s all over the “weaponized” FBI trying to protect school board members whose lives are being threatened, but completely blind to the tsunami of blatant law breaking on his own side.  When Chuck Todd brought up the fact that the NY Assistant US Attorney, Charles McGonigal, has been charged with taking money from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, Jordan stated he was going to investigate that, but brushed Todd off when he pointed out that Paul Manafort was Deripaska’s primary contact between the TFG campaign and the Russians.  He wants to investigate the Steele dossier, but is not interested in investigating whether the US Attorney’s office in NY was suppressing the dossier and leaking other stories to the press intended to damage Hillary during the 2016.  The new conservative House majority has only a few goals for this term – cementing in their own power, hamstringing the federal government, and exacting revenge for TFG’s loss in 2020.  That’s it, period.  They don’t give a flying shit about their country or their constituents; their only tools are retribution and disinformation.

When asked about the George Floyd act and reforming policing in the US, Jordan took the usual position of conservatives today, saying that the US government has no role in policing reform and that it must be handled at “state and local levels”.  This is the strategy now followed by most Republicans who shirk responsibility to avoid being blamed for the consequences.  It’s also the SCOTUS’s normal response to all issues of privacy, individual rights, civil rights, and voting rights.  The Court, under Roberts, has now taken the position of taking no position on critical issues like privacy, gun safety laws, campaign finance, radical gerrymandering, and systemic voter suppression, punting all those issues to the state level which in 35 states is under the iron fisted control of minority Republicans cemented into power by…wait for it…radical gerrymandering and voter suppression.  The Court has also gone so far as drawing the idiotic conclusions that money doesn’t corrupt and that magically the Voting Rights Act is no longer needed.

At the state level, DeSantis and Abbott are the poster children for shirking their duty.  They both habitually override local county and city officials who are trying to protect their own citizens by grabbing power at the state level to hamstring them, but then take no responsibility for massive failures like the 2021 Texas power failure that killed 700 Texans.  By keep a “free market” ideology where free markets don’t exist, they avoid blame when their own constituents suffer from their negligence.  By hiding behind idiotic libertarian ideology that has never worked anywhere on the planet, they can blame faceless villains rather than doing their goddam jobs to improve the lives of their constituents.

This is the biggest fraud that’s been committed against the American people, but they retain power through two strategies – using disinformation to blame non-existent bogeymen for their own failures, and radical gerrymandering that creates a base of voters who believe their destructionist rhetoric and bullshit.  AND, it’s getting worse, not better.

Under TFG, the DOJ appointed attorney John Durham as special counsel to dig dirt and trump up (pun intended) charges against everyone he could find to fabricate a case that the FBI and Obama were “spying” on the TFG campaign in 2016.  Ignoring the fact that TFG operatives are actively trying to collude with the Russians to swing the vote away from Hillary, Durham threw everything against the wall, hoping something would stick.  The victim of that smear campaign was cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussman, who was feeding data to the FBI about his suspicions about Russian interference.  When one of those cases he reported proved wrong, Durham jumped on it like a duck on a June bug, and charged Sussman with lying to the FBI.

That case failed yesterday, when a federal jury acquitted him.  Speaking to the press, jury forewoman said,

The Washington Post started releasing audio tapes of 17 interviews Bob Woodward held with Trump since last December.  They are blockbuster, including Trump actually admitting ON TAPE that he lied to the American people about the severity of the Coronavirus pandemic for months.

Woodward’s book also quotes Trump as saying of US military leadership, “my fucking generals are a bunch of pussies”. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals.”

In other news, Brian Murphy, a senior career DHS staffer, filed a whistleblower complaint against senior current and former DHS political appointees, former DHS Secretary Nielsen, Chad Wolf, who is serving as acting DHS secretary; and Ken Cuccinelli, the deputy DHS secretary. The complaint details orders from said appointees for DHS to lie to congress and downplay Russian interference and other foreign threats that would “make Trump look bad.”

To add insult to injury, today Trump named right wing nut bags Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton to his list of potential Supreme Court nominees.  No shit.

Yesterday, Bill Barr’s Justice Department announced that it was taking over the defense for Trump against E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him in relation to her charge of a 1990’s rape she alleged.  The Justice Department has claimed that Trump calling Carroll a liar was within the boundaries of his official duties as president.  No shit.

Lastly, the House Oversight Committee has announced the beginning of an investigation into Postmaster General Louis DeJoy into an illegal reimbursement scheme that paid his executives back for making contributions to Trump and other Republicans, a felony.

Happy Wednesday!

Dana Boente, 38 year veteran of the FBI and its top lawyer was fired yesterday after he was criticized by Trump Toad Lou Dobbs on Fox News.  The order to fire him came from a “high level”, and not FBI director Christopher Wray.  Boente led the investigation of Russian colluder Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI  about his role with the Russians.

The firing happened on the same day that a new transcript of Flynn’s conversation with Sergey Kislyak was released by the White House that showed he actually WAS colluding with the Russians.

You just can’t make this up.

Since we all know that Russia prefers Trump to any other US president (since Putin said so on global television) it’s not a surprise that Russian military hackers got into the systems of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden was on the board of directors for a few years.  Ignoring the stupidity of Hunter’s taking of that job, there is no evidence of wrongdoing by him or his father, but that didn’t stop the Russians from doing the job that Trump extorted Zelensky to perform, the move that drew an impeachment action against him.

The effort started in November just as the impeachment inquiry started in the House and Trump began frantically trying to discredit it.  Using phishing and spearphishing tactics (just like in 2016) the Russian GRU has been bombarding Burisma email accounts and have successfully stolen email credentials to get inside of the company.

The super frustrating thing about all of this illegal activity is not only Trump’s acceptance of it, but his encouragement for it to continue.  When is enough enough for Republicans?