No Illusions About Collusion

The fish was huge

The fish was this big

                                                                            


    Mueller’s report stated that, “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systemic fashion.”

It also stated that, “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency,” something Putin has admitted publicly and Trump has agreed with.

It also stated, “Russia could assist Trump’s campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton,” something Trump publicly requested.

The report also talked extensively about the secret Trump Tower meeting between Trump’s senior campaign manager, Trump family members and a Russian lawyer promising to produce “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. It also reported on numerous other meeting between Trump operatives and Russians.                                                             The report cited initial statements by Trump and his family denying the meeting and its purpose as lies.

Attorney General Barr read, so he says, Mueller’s report including these quotes and concluded there was no collusion.
Trump didn’t have to read the report. If Barr said, no collusion, that was good enough for him. However, for those Americans who, like himself, had not read the report, Trump issued an official White House Twitter announcement stating that there was no collusion.

He then called Putin, the former head of the KGB, to inform him they had both been cleared—by the Attorney General. Bottom line: no conclusion, witch hunt, big hoax. They had both hinted at this outcome, but until Barr arrived at his conclusion of Mueller’s conclusion, they were both under a cloud of suspicion.

Both men are accustomed to operating under clouds of suspicion, even storm clouds of suspicion, but it’s always nice to have an umbrella when the rain does fall.
Trump and Putin congratulated each other for surviving the Democratic witch hunt, commiserating, no doubt, that the business of winning elections is not for the weak-hearted.

So where does this leave everyone?

Putin is ecstatic. He got the candidate he wanted and the American political system is a mess. True, 25 Russian operatives and three Russian companies were indicted for criminal activity, but as they say in Russia, “So what?”

Trump is feeling good, too. After saying, “no collusion” ten thousand times, it was nice to finally be vindicated by his hand-picked Attorney General, who before even reading the report had concluded that a president can’t be indicted, and possibly proven guilty of a crime because he’s the president. If you can’t be proven guilty, obviously you can’t be guilty.

But, where does this leave the American people?

I guess we will have to wait and see.

Wait for what? Look for what?

We will have to wait and see if in the months leading up to the 2020 election, Trump announces a summit with the Russian dictator, Putin, because as president he can do things in plain sight that he could never do as a candidate.

Wait and see if during that summit, they have a private conversation behind closed doors as they so like to do.

Wait and see if Trump opts to tell us nothing about what they talked about, other than to say it was very friendly and there was definitely no collusion, despite the obvious secrecy, before demanding we believe him.

Wait and see if, like with the Trump Tower meeting, this also turns out to be a lie.

Wait and see if when that happens, Republicans in Congress finally say, “Wait a minute. We don’t like what we’re seeing.”

Who knows how big the fish was, All I know is it was a fish.
It could have been a fish story? Who knows?

So, now we're banning Kate Smith?

   When I first read the story about the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Flyers discontinuing the playing of Kate Smith’s version of “God Bless America,” my first thought was God help America.

I understand the “Me Too” movement and its goals.

I understand the prejudices and racism that lingers in America, which has to be exposed at every opportunity.

I understand the concept of zero tolerance. That if we let something go unchallenged, the problem only gets worse, although zero tolerance has proven just as bad as the original problems.

Well, newsflash. We have another problem to worry about. We are fast becoming a nation with no common sense. It would be too easy to say, as we often do, that a lack of leadership at the top is the reason for all the stupid-ness at the bottom, but “too easy” is another problem we face in this country.

The reason for throwing Kate Smith under the bus was her 1931 recording of “That’s why Darkies were born,” written by Tin Pan Alley lyricist, Lew Brown.  Forget that the satirical song poked fun at whites. Forget that at the same time, in the real world deep south far from Tin Pan Alley, real whites were lynching real Negros.

Forget that Lew Brown also wrote “Don’t sit under the apple tree” and the “Beer Barrel Polka.” He also wrote “Shine,” which had racial overtones and was recorded by Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and Anne Murray among others. He wrote most of his songs between the two world wars, a time when Negros couldn’t attend white schools, eat in white restaurants, or sit in the front of the bus.

These songs were written and recorded for one reason and one reason only. Audiences were buying them.

The lyricist were writing and the singers singing about a very real world that didn’t exist on records.

My point is, yes these were terrible times involving terrible laws and outrageous criminal behavior, but the music industry was only reflecting the world that existed at that time. The music industry didn’t create that world. In fact, the music industry has played a large role in taking us away from that world.

Individual American bigots and racist, those who are often given cover under the cloak of American Exceptionalism, gave us that world that we’d now like to expunge from memory.

Maybe, it’s time to take that picture of old granddad down from the wall.

Or, we can stop taking it out on individuals and start fixing a culture that has been bad for so long that all we can do is search for scapegoats.

    This in no way excuses statues of Confederate generals. They fought against this country. And their statues were only erected during the same period many of these songs were written, not to entertain people, or to honor the soldiers as their supporters claim. They were erected to send a message that the war might have been lost, but the fight was going to continue.

Whatever the issue that people think something needs to be done about, I suggest we attack the issue. Shakespeare may have been right when he wrote, “The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.” That doesn’t make it right. The good should count for something.

Attacking individuals, particularly individuals having nothing to do with the problem is getting tiresome, especially when so many real problems go unfixed. Playing the blame game and not doing the hard work is another problem we face in today’s world.

Blacks are having their voting rights attacked in North Carolina and other states. Republicans harp on voter fraud as if it were a real thing and are virtually silent about Russia attacking our elections.

None of this has anything to do with a song Kate Smith recorded in 1931. Descendants of people who listened to that song back then are guilty of racism today. White nationalists are still the problem. Kate Smith is not a problem.

A lot of what the entertainment industry has done in the last century is questionable, going all the way back to, “Birth of a Nation,” but everything they have done has been geared to their audiences.

If we stop using common sense, who knows what dumb thing we’ll do next? Let’s give entertainers a break and start shaping up ourselves.

    

Hoag Franklin

All of us are familiar with the names Kit Carson, Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill. Few of us know about Hoag Franklin. Born in 1830 in Illinois and raised in Lone Tree, Nebraska, he not only witnessed the Wild West, but he played an integral role in it. By the time he died in 1912 in San Pedro, he'd seen and done it all.

His story is my latest novel. Hoag's adventures will be illustrated by Danielle Grandi 

This introduction explains how I discovered Hoag Franklin.

The Discovery

I was shuffling around the squeaky-rickety-floor thrift shop. The kind, you know, where you can find everything, but you’re still surprised when you find anything. There were the familiar stacks of old Life and Look magazines, with mostly covers of the Kennedy’s and long-dead movie stars or astronauts from the 1960s—all packaged nicely in supersized plastic lunch bags. Any of them would make a lovely snack.

There were old vinyl records, and older vinyl records plus a lot of records that shouldn’t have been allowed to become old. Pictures hung everywhere and I could only wonder, had they ever hung anywhere else. I didn’t think so. Just like some movies go straight to DVD, I don’t think it is far-fetched to think some pictures go straight to thrift stores—especially those frightening portraits of the men and woman staring at me from every wall in the room.

I felt like a dog on a walk. Something would catch my eye and before I could zero in on it, something else grabbed my attention, and then something else, but nothing could hold my interest. I was bouncing from one piece of forgotten...neglected...abandoned memory to another.

Then I saw the box lying on the floor in the corner. A rag doll rested on top of it...I say rested and not dead but the dust covering it and the box told me it hadn’t moved or been moved so much as an inch since it was put there. Both the box and the doll reeked of that stale, musty smell...though how I was aware of that I can’t explain. My nostrils had been under siege of that mildewed stench in a losing battle since the moment I walked through the door.

I tossed the doll to the side and instantly felt remorse. It couldn’t have been the first time and I was sure it would not be the last. Still.

I picked the box up and surveyed the outside. There were no markings, no pictures, no writing to indicate what might be inside. It appeared to be a box a shirt might have come in, or some small towels. Maybe. It could and probably has held just about anything. I lifted the top to see what it was holding now.

Well. Well, indeed. I may have just found something. Wouldn’t that be a first? Inside the box lie a stack of papers, obviously from an old typewriter...possibly like the one I’d seen ten minutes earlier and two aisles over. A worn ribbon held what appeared to be a hundred, maybe more pages together.

The print was faded but certainly readable. The title, centered a third of the way down the first page read, THE LIFE, TIMES AND ADVENTURES OF HOAG FRANKLIN—INDIAN SCOUT, BUFFALO HUNTER, LAWMAN, and VAUDEVILLE ENTERTAINER.

Was I holding a long-lost, forgotten manuscript? Of course, I was holding a long-lost, probably forgotten manuscript. I sifted through the pages to be sure, but there could be no doubt. This was a story...someone’s story...Hoag Franklin’s story, obviously.

But, who the hell was Hoag Franklin? When were his life and times? Obviously quite a while ago from the title. There was only one way to find out.

I walked around a little more but I wasn’t really looking for anything else. In fact, I was anxious to see more of what I had. Before long, I walked out the door with the only copy in the world of THE LIFE, TIMES AND ADVENTURES OF HOAG FRANKLIN—INDIAN SCOUT, BUFFALO HUNTER, LAWMAN, and VAUDEVILLE ENTERTAINER.

Oh, yes. I took the doll, too. They just looked like they belonged together.

No sooner had I gotten in my car then I opened the box, unwrapped the manuscript and started reading.

Hanging up is too good for them

“Don’t hang up. This is not a sales call. Are you suffer—”

The only thing I was suffering from was the inability to complete an afternoon nap without some telemarketer interrupting me.

This country used to stand for something. Our people used to stand for something. We took pride in our work. When did we become a nation of people who don’t care?

What I’m talking about, of course, is pick-up lines. Pick-up lines today leaves a person with no choice but to hang up.

How many times can a person cold-call me and ask if I’m suffering from chronic pain and not expect me to answer, “The only pain I’m suffering from is a pain in the ass about four times a week from someone like you asking me if I’m suffering from chronic pain,” after which I brashly hang up.

How many times must I be reminded that the warranty on my 2003 Tribute has expired? Hell, yes, it’s expired. It expired in 2005.

How many times must Bridget from card services call to inform me that, no there isn’t anything wrong with my credit, but yes I might be paying too much interest on my credit card debt, which apparently she doesn’t know doesn’t exist.

Bridget has no credibility. Sometimes it’s Bridget from Cincinnati. Sometimes it’s Bridget from Des Moines. Sometimes it’s Bridget from Paducah. 

I keep getting these calls with the same worn-out, meaningless opening lines. As young men, hell, as high school boys, we learn that pick-up lines are useless at best and lame ones are actually damaging to one’s reputation—unless you’re living in a war zone.

The last time pick-up lines worked on me was when I was serving in Vietnam. Whenever a Vietnamese girl wearing hip American-styled clothes, enough make-up to put Mona Lisa to shame, and calling herself, Linda, might have approached me on Tu Do Street, smiled and uttered the words, “Hey, G.I., you look lonely. You looking for girl friend?”

My answer, unless an M.P. was standing within listening range was always, “Yes. Yes. I am. How did you know?” We’d then go inside the bar and I’d spend the last of my monopoly money on endless drinks. Hers was a pick-up line I couldn’t refuse.

However, my living room is not a war zone. The sofa I’m lying on is not a bunker. Most of all, I’m not falling for a pick-up line that begins with, “Don’t hang up.”

Really! “Don’t hang up” is how you expect to keep me on the line.

I used to be a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. I’m not bragging, but I will say, it was harder than being stationed in Vietnam. I wasn’t a particularly good salesman, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. In many ways, I wasn’t much different than today’s telemarketer. I arrived unannounced, probably at a bad time and selling a product most people already had and didn’t need.

There was one difference between me and today’s intruder. I was working a whole lot harder. I wasn’t running down a list of names. I was walking a neighborhood of houses. Slamming the door in my face was still an option just as slamming the phone down is today, but as a salesman and not a telemarketer, I think I brought a little more to the table.

Can we at least agree on what compromise is?

Why can’t they just reach a compromise?

Seems like a reasonable enough request. There’s only one problem. Many people don’t appear to understand what a compromise is.

Example: A high school girl has a crush on a classmate and offers her parents a proposal. If you don’t let me stay out till midnight with this boy I like, I won’t eat my dinner or do my homework.

Compromise isn’t, okay, if you eat your dinner and do your homework, you can stay out till midnight.”

The compromise is, we all know you have to eat. We also know you have to do your homework. These are not bargaining chips.

The real question, is how late the girl can stay out. The answer might be, because you really like this boy, and we know him and his family, and he seems polite, and we trust you, we’ll let you stay out an hour longer than usual.

Or, it could be something else. The thing with compromises is you never know what they’ll be; and you shouldn’t. If you do, they aren’t compromises.

Compromises aren’t accepting something bad to get something good. That’s hostage negotiating.

Take the immigration problem.

Most people, including members of Congress are on the side of dreamers in the DACA debate. At least they say they are.

Everyone agrees that we need more judges and agents handling immigration cases.

Everyone agrees that separating families and putting kids in cages make us look barbaric.

Everyone agrees government workers have nothing to do with border crossings.

These are not bargaining chips. Nor should they be. These issues can be dealt with easily and quickly. Then we can move unto solving the real problems, whose solutions not everyone agrees on.

Like an immigration problem that entails more than our southern border, or a very real drug dependency problem in this country that is much more complicated than stopping drugs from coming across the Rio Grande.

Almost everyone agrees that these problems are more complicated than the way the president presents them. Most people realize we don’t live in his gold-plated, black-and-white world.

Compromise is working on those areas where two sides don’t agree, but are willing to listen.

Yes, it involves giving in to some extent, but the giving in is in the area of contention. Most importantly, the discussions must revolve around indisputable facts.

On July 24, 2016, I wrote a piece, “The colors of compromise” that appeared in the Forum. It offered the idea that mixing colors is not something magical or mysterious, but rather something based on hard, cold physics. A tremendous range of colors (look at any Glidden paint display) can be derived from mixing just a few basic colors (red, yellow and blue). But, you can’t just throw them together.

It is a slow, deliberate process.

Compromise in Congress or between nations is rarely accomplished at the highest levels. Two sides can’t come to the table with demands and expect success. What they can expect are stand-offs like the one we currently have.

The way around this roadblock is for Congress to pass the laws it knows it can pass and get those issues off the table.

Then, people who aren’t the president or the Speaker of the House or the Majority Leader of the Senate can start talking. They can debate real facts, not hyperbole, and look for real solutions, not game winners. The compromise will be a position that makes the most of the best of both sides and uses the least of the worse of both sides.

I lean more in favor of Speaker Pelosi than Leader McConnell, but I understand that as veterans of Congress, both have a better idea of how compromises are arrived at. They both know they are dealing with a president who has gotten his own way his whole life.

These two leaders must first stand up for Congress and explain to the president how government works. Then they must assign their members to begin work in an orderly manner, paying attention to detail.

Sadly, this is what Congress did during the Bush administration and made considerable progress until outside forces scuttled the process. I believe smart high school students given the facts could do this again, if they truly wanted to.

These students would understand that compromise is more than just, I’ll give you this if you give me that. It depends on what this and that are, and do they relate to the problem at hand.

Inside Trump's Brain

THE SETTING: An idea has just been put on the table.

THE CAST (in order of appearance):

Sensible Opposition (aka the grown-up in the room, voice of reason, Sanity).

The Bad Idea.

Trump’s Gut.

Trump’s Brain—the final word.

Trump’s Mouth

An unlimited cast of loco extras—bad ideas from anywhere and everywhere, all unchecked and  uncensored.

THE SCENE: A decision must be made on whether to make the idea official, which is to say, whether to put it on Twitter or save it for another day.

Inside Trump's Brain

“No, no, no, a million times no,” said the voice of reason.

“Shut up. Don’t listen to it, Brain. This is the best idea, ever. People will think you’re a genius.”

“People will think you’re an idiot. No one has ever thought you were a genius. Not once has anyone ever thought you were a genius.”

“I think he’s a genius.”

“Who said that? Is that you, Gut? Can’t you mind your own business just once? I might even stand a chance of getting him to do the right thing for the first time in his life if you would stay out of it.”

“He wants me here. He likes me. He listens to me a whole lot more than he does to you guys.”

“Wait a minute. He listens to me. He listens to me all the time. He’s been listening to me for so long, he doesn’t even have to think about it,” said the boastful bad idea.

“And who do you think is responsible for that?”

“Okay, you are, Gut, but he still needs me. Without me, he’d only be hooked on a feeling, with nothing there. I give him something real to latch onto. Those dumb-ass ideas don’t come out of the blue, you know.”

“Don’t you guys get it? The voice of reason was growing more frustrated. “You’re both responsible—responsible for making him look like an idiot. You, Bad Idea, when are you going to grow up? And you, Gut, you keep jumping on these bad ideas like a vulture on a piece of fly-infested road kill. When are you going to realize no one in their right mind jumps on dead meat?

“All I’m asking for is a minute...a lousy minute...to try and talk some sense into him...to make him understand the consequences of listening to a bad idea and a gut telling him there’s no such thing as a bad idea.”

What makes Trump really mad

The civilized world looks upon Mohammed bin Salman and Vladimir Putin as they greet each other at the G20 Buenos Aires Summit and cannot believe their eyes. These two suspected (with good cause) murderers are laughing and high-fiving and fist-bumping like two teenage boys celebrating a little league victory.

One can only imagine how this image must infuriate Donald Trump, the man who lives in awe of these two brutal dictators. Trump makes no secret of his admiration for strong leaders—Putin, Erdogan, Kim Jong-un, Duarte—men the rest of the world recognize as bullies and murderers.

Among the many criticisms of President Trump is his seemingly inability to grasp the intricacies of how a Constitutional republic operates. The idea of checks and balances, a representative government accountable to the people, the simple concept of respect for those who don’t agree with you seem foreign to him.

He can’t understand why his Attorney General is loyal to the Constitution and not to him. He doesn’t understand why he can’t get the FBI, his FBI, to investigate his political opponents. He sees the opposition party as not that, but rather as traitors. In his mind, voting on principle is a vote thrown away.

All this should come as no surprise. His business empire is built, like most empires, on nepotism, not sound business practices. There was no board of director’s oversight. Laws regulating his business were seen as obstructions to be ignored.

Family, and the loyalty that family provides, were the cornerstones of the Trump organization. They remain at the center of the Trump administration.

But to say he doesn’t understand what democracy stands for or how it works is to shortchange him. That great brain that he is always pointing to, the one God could have given to anyone, but chose to give it to him, might not be all Trump imagines it to be, but he would be the first to agree that he ain’t stupid.

What bothers him most is not the difference between our system of government and the governments that his admired dictators rule over, but rather that there has to be a difference. Why can’t a president possessing his unique talent not still get the special treatment these dictators receive, despite living in a free country?

Every Trump move is questioned—by Democrats and Republicans, as well as foreign leaders. The press won’t leave him alone. He has publicly voiced his frustration that the American press won’t defer to him the way the North Korean press fawns over Kim Jong-un. It’s not that he doesn’t know the reason. It’s that he doesn’t think the reason should exist.

For two years, he has had to repeat constantly that there isn’t, and never has been, any collusion between him and Russia. He barely knows Russia. Yet, he can’t shake the idea that whenever he makes these proclamations, everyone in the room is winking and rolling their eyes.

At the same time, Putin is able to say whatever he wants and no one in Russia questions his motives.

In Helsinki Trump shared the stage as Putin admitted he wanted Trump to win the 2016 election, an election that Russia interfered with, and who's interference Trump denies. Now, in Buenos Aires, Trump has to pretend his cancelling of talks with Putin is because of Putin's barbaric behavior in Ukraine and has nothing to do with revelations that Russia and Trump are, and have been for a long time, tight as thieves. 

Then he must listen as Putin's spokesperson explains that yes, Trump says it's about Ukraine, but the real reason is probably rooted in his domestic problems back home—problems Trump insists don't even exist. 

Trump is relegated to tweeting stupid stuff because he can’t speak the truth, while Putin can say anything he damn well pleases and face no repercussions. When Trump exclaimed that he could shoot someone in Times Square and get away with it, even he knew that while his supporters might accept that behavior, such action would be seen by everyone else as unforgivable. Such is not the case in their own countries for the real life murderers that Trump holds in such high esteem.

Putin, Mohammed bin Salman, and guys like them can say and do whatever they want. They can literally get away with murder, while Trump is unable to get away with what he considers no more than political shenanigans, things he thinks everyone does—mainly because they are things he has always done.

Trump is a great believer of democracy. He just wishes that when a great leader like him comes along, democracy could cut him some slack, and operate more like a dictatorship.