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A little over a month ago, Donald Trump was found guilty of defrauding a charity. A children’s cancer fund. Now, it was the Donald Trump Foundation, and they did donate some money to charities, but there was a whole lot of skimming going on. Silly things, like he used the money to buy a portrait of himself, and a football helmet once worn by Tim Tebow, and some for more nefarious purposes, like paying off lawsuits, and donating it to his own campaign.
It was way illegal. There hasn’t been a ton of press coverage, I just found out about it on Facebook the other day. I’m sure at the time we were all obsessing over some tweet or another. Once upon a time, this would have been cause for impeachment all by itself. It would be cause for a public outcry, an old fashioned tarring and feathering. Certainly an eternal shunning by polite society.
It should, at the very least, be added to the impeachment charges. There are a couple of reasons for that. The greater the number of charges, the greater a chance for conviction, of course. Also, it’s just the right thing to do. You can’t allow politicians to just dip their arms into the cookie jar of cancer funding and not suffer any repercussions for it. That’s a terrible example to set.
But, perhaps most importantly, because it’s a financial crime, and that opens up the question of his taxes, and all the profit making deals he’s made as president, and all the profit-making deals his children have made while he’s in president, and eventually Trump, Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Jared will all have to pay heavy fines, maybe even do a little felony time, and they will have no electoral viability for every more.
Not that I’m holding my breath. But I think that’s what should happen.

One thing that kind of ticks me off is when people say “All politicians are liars” or “all politicians are crooks” as a way of ending a political conversation, without saying “Except Bernie Sanders, of course.”
I suppose it’s understandable. Most people are far more concerned with tending their garden, playing with their dog, trying a new recipe, or planning their next vacation than they are with who become the leaders in our society. Also, throughout our whole lifetimes, we’ve seen nothing but politicians who were liars and crooks. It is, probably, well over 90% and the percentage increases the higher the office. There’s no doubt in my mind there are lots of well-intentioned people at the city council, or school board level, but even most of those burn out after a term or two of incessantly dealing with a crooked mayor and an indifferent governor.
This year, however, we have a chance to change all that. When you see someone posting a statement like “all politicians are liars,” even though they are probably a nice person and just trying to get back to posting kitty pics, you should respond with “Not Bernie Sanders” or the somewhat more aggressive “Show me one time where Bernie has ever lied?” If they say “All politicians are crooks” challenge them to show you any case where Bernie has improperly used his office for personal profit.
You can do it for most of the others quite easily.
Or maybe not. That might be seen as too confrontational. Maybe just keep talking about his policies, which will benefit everybody, and eventually they’ll come around.
Because he is not a politician like all others.

It’s a medical term in origin. After a battle or major catastrophe, like a gas explosion or a mass shooting or something, when the ER is flooded with casualties, so the medical personnel need to sort them into three groups: those who are dead or going to die no matter what, those with minor injuries who can wait, and those who can be saved by quick action.
The third group is dealt with first.
It’s applicable to politics as well. For Berners to prevail, I suggest we do a little triage at this point.
There are voters who are dead to us. Those who have billions of dollars, or at least tens of millions, and those who love Trump because they are racist to the core. They will never vote for us.
Then there are the groups who have strong reasons to vote for Bernie anyway. Most of those are already with us, but they include gay people, people who smoke marijuana, people who are making less than $15 an hour, black people who are tired of police murdering them, people who don’t have health insurance, people who hate their health insurance, Latinos who are sick of all the insults at the very least, anybody with college debt or medical debt, the elderly, the handicapped, the homeless, and fierce advocates of radical environmental action.
Then there’s the group of people we need to deal with first. Those who could vote for Bernie (they usually have no significant differences with him on policy) but say nice things about Warren and the incompetent mayor of South Bend, and senile old Joe Biden, and say we should support anybody who’s not Trump, and still resent us mightily because they blame us for Hillary’s loss in 2016.
We have to talk to them. It’s hard to know what to say, since they perceive anything we say as an attack, but that’s the group we have to deal with. If we can bring them to our side, one by one and then by millions, Bernie Sanders will be the next president.
And that’s the argument I’d present: if you, dear Centrist Democratic voter, after an analysis of his policies, and his record, can find it in your heart to join us, we will win. Together.

I am very unhappy about how the elections in Britain turned out. Boris Johnson will remain in power, Brexit will happen, their National Health Service is at risk, life will get worse for foreigners living in Britain and for British people living in Europe.
But, it’s not just about the damage it will do, depressing as that is. It is about what it says about the British people. Given the choice between a return to sanity and rushing headlong into a completely avoidable disaster, they have chosen rushing headlong into a completely avoidable disaster – much the same way the Americans have.
If this vote were the second referendum (and it was) Brexit won with flying colors. Britain has chosen to leave the EU, with no deal. They have stormed out of the relationship, slamming the door, and will sleep in their car until they can find a flat of their own.
It seems incomprehensible to me, but then again, so does the existence of Donald Trump. So did the rise of Hitler to everyone in the West and a lot of people in Germany.

But, it’s happening. As one person I was discussing the results with this morning (who was pretty happy about the whole situation) said “We will see.”

The ‘Afghanistan Papers’ recently published by the Washington Post consist of a lot of interviews with people who’d been in Afghanistan, and they essentially prove that nobody knows, or ever knew, what the hell was going on. Which is what a lot of people have been saying for the last 18 years, but nobody listens. At least, nobody with the power to do anything.
They did know (that is, the upper echelon officers and the politicians running the war) that the U.S. was not winning the war, that control over the whole country was a delusion, that people within the puppet government were skimming off huge amounts of American aid for their own personal selves, and that none of this was likely to ever change.
And nothing will. Since the release of the papers, there has been no hue and cry to prosecute anybody from the Bush administration or the Obama administration or within the military.
Nobody was ever prosecuted for the Viet Nam war, either. Oh, a couple people here and there for war crimes, but even most of them got off, and the greater point is that nobody was ever punished for starting the war itself.
So, there will be more wars. There is tremendous profit to be made, and apparently no chance of prosecution. If bank robbery were as legal as war making, all of the banks would be robbed tomorrow.
I wish I had a cheery, optimistic line to end this with, but I don’t. There will be more wars. We have not learned.