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I’ve written about the whole Russian thing a couple of times already this week, so I don’t want to get too deep into it, but…

I think there are a couple of things that Americans are overlooking.  I may be underestimating most Americans, but I did grow up there, and judging from the current political climate, certain things haven’t changed.  To Americans, the rest of the world is invisible.   If they notice it at all, it is like some big, fearsome place.
So, I realize that I may be saying things that any intelligent person would know, but it certainly seems they are being overlooked.

First, the internet  is international.  O.K., maybe not China, they’ve got their own system going on, but there are people from almost everywhere on Facebook.  Among my Facebook friends are people in Russian, and Brazil, and Iran, and England, and Australia, and New Zealand, and Canada, and lots of other countries.  I like  that aspect of it,  and I don’t think it’s possible to ever og back from it.
Second, people in other countries have opinions about American politics.  It’s hard to avoid.  The U.S. is a key player in world politics.

So, any time there is a U.S. election, and this is going to be the case from now on, foreign individuals are  going to be blogging about it, posting memes about it, sharing articles about it, and making comments on it.
I don’t know if they’ll find any serious wrongdoing (all that was wrong with their ads is that they were super lame, but identity theft is a serious crime), but I doubt they’ll even be able to bring them to trial.

They are in Russia.  It’s a whole other country.

This morning I woke up and finished, first thing, well, making coffee was first thing, but I finished the poem on the  first cup and it was a poem that had been thrashing around in my mind for four or five days, so I felt real good about that.
I posted it right away to two poetry sites.  One, which is exclusively  for  rhyming poetry, I’ll  probably just ignore in future.  I’ve submitted three poems there, starting a couple of weeks ago, and it still just says ‘3 Poems Pending,’ whereas most other sites just put them up right away.
I could respect  a model where not all poems are published, but I glanced through the site a bit and realized that plenty of the poetry there is crap so  it’s not a question of editors being selective, it’s a question, likely, of editors being absent.  I also noticed that about half the posts were from one person, the admin, and a lot  of the others were announcements of poetry events and contests.
On the other site, I just checked and zero reactions to my masterpiece.  Par for the course, but par for the course is pretty darned frustrating.  About an hour ago, I published another poem there, a much  shorter one, 4 lines, just a silly thing, but that allows people to read it all at once and it means you can give it a colored background.  It got a couple of likes almost immediately.
It’s human nature, I guess.  I also ignore a lot of poems which are long enough that you have to click on ‘more,’ which is at about  3 or 4 lines, so it’s just long enough to get a spark or not and allows no room for a poem to build slowly.  The literature of the future is going to have to be short and sweet.  Because, as Marshall McCluhan said, the medium is the message.

Seriously, Hillary loyalists must be starting to feel a little bit embarrassed about now.  13 Russians, and they’ve been charged with opening Facebook accounts under false names.  Who hasn’t done that?

Well, maybe that’s a bit disingenuous of me.  There’s a difference between using a joke name and setting up an account for Boogerface P. Malarkey or E. Tobaggo Dix, and actually stealing somebody’s identity for the account information.  So, I guess they can add identity theft.
It’s not going to lead to impeachment, though. (They’ve got plenty for that.  If they wanted to impeach, they  could impeach.)  They’ve pretty  much admitted they don’t have enough to make the collusion charge stick.  They’ve changed the rhetoric from ‘tampering with’ the election down to ‘influencing’ the election.  So, it’s time for a quick review of a few key words.

Rigging – Deciding on a predetermined outcome, and being able to enforce it.  What Hillary did in the primaries.
Hacking – Something only people who are really good with computers can do.  It’s not just spamming or trolling.  It’s stealing passwords, taking over somebody’s computer, nasty stuff like that.  To  say the election was hacked means somebody actually gained control over the voting machines.  I doubt very much if the 13 trolls they just arrested had done that.  And the DNC servers were not hacked.  That was a leak.
Tampering – Maybe like low level hacking.  Could be old fashioned political shenanigans.  Stink bombs at polling stations, stealing yard signs, stuff like that.

Leak – If you get the information legitimately, like maybe your an insider, and you tell other people.  This is how Julian Assange got the goods on the DNC.  It doesn’t matter what the DNC says, they are liars.
Influence –  When you try to convince people to vote for the candidate you like.  That’s what the 13 Russians, who have not been connected to the Russian government, nor yet (though I wouldn’t be surprised) to the Trump campaign, are accused of.  That, and maybe the identity theft.

I guess we will just have to wait and see what it all means.  Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russians for meddling in the U.S. presidential election in 2016.  But what does this mean?
If they were actually working for the Russian government, it might be worth making a diplomatic protest over, but unless the ‘interference’ actually  involved hacking voting machines, distributing false ballots, or arranging the closure of polling places in key districts, then it’s probably not illegal.
See, a Russian person, even one who is kind of sleazy and uses a fake name for their account, has a right to have an opinion on American elections.  I’m an American citizen, and I have posted my opinion on elections in Britain, and Ukraine, and Italy, and France, and of course the Czech Republic where I live.  Frequently.  If they had looked for accounts with a negative view of Hillary coming from Brazil, or England, or Nigeria, I’m sure they could have found plenty.  She’s been on the world stage for a long time and you’d be hard pressed to find a country where at least some people haven’t formed an opinion of Hillary Clinton, and it’s likely that 50% of those opinions are negative.
If they prove that these people are working directly for the Russian government, well, that’s objectionable, but is  it any  worse  than our U.S. politicians constantly  making snide remarks about Venezuela, or actually invading Syria and arming terrorist groups to try and  oust their president?
I hope this keeps going up and up until it touches somebody that counts, but I would have preferred they go after Trump for tax evasion, or  money  laundering, or corruption, or anything that is actually, clearly and unarguably criminal. I wish Robert Mueller all  the  luck in the world, and would love to see him bring Trump down.  However, I don’t think that charges against ’13 Russians’ is going to do it.

One idea,  of course, is a tax.  A 1,000% tax on any ammunition that can be used in assault rifles.  It wouldn’t make it too difficult to OWN them,  if all  you want to do is hang the gun on the wall and admire the craftsmanship.  It might be prohibitive for hunters, because if you spend $1,000 to shoot a deer – 2 or 3,000 if you’re a bad shot – the meat does not justify the cost.
The other idea is insurance.  If you want to buy a gun, you should need a license, and we should make one of the requirements for the license liability insurance – same as with a driver’s license.  Now, let’s set the price of one life at $10,000,000.  I’m sure those who’ve lost people would say that’s not nearly enough, but it will do as a nice, round number to illustrate the idea.  $2,000,000 for serious injury.  Faced with the prospect of a $200,000,000 payout, you can be certain the insurance companies would be asking a lot of questions.
“Do you have any children at home?”
“Are any of them teenage boys?”
“Do they have any friends?”

“Are they known for making jokes about how much they’d like to kill people?”

“Have they ever been associated with any hate groups or paramilitary groups?”
“Have they ever been banned from having a backpack at school because the teachers were afraid of what he might be carrying in it?”
Stuff like that.  I think it would cut mass shootings and, in fact, all gun crime right down.