2016 Dec 10^th

An interesting story was told by Rachel Maddow (Ravin’ Rachel) last night. It seems that our CIA had discovered incontrovertible evidence of Russian attempts to influence our election by leaking emails from the Clinton camp that would favor Donald Trump.  Such shenanigans had been suspected for some time but now our electronic spooks had the goods on their electronic spooks. The immediate problem for the administration was what to do about this information.

When in doubt call a meeting so the blame for any stupid decisions can be shared. A meeting of the principle deciders from the congress was called. This meeting was held in a room outfitted with the latest technology to prevent un-authorized evesdropping. To be decided was whether or not to release this admittedly explosive stuff just before the most vitriolic election in living history.

No one would be surprised to find that because this information about Russian interference in our election would be a negative for Trump, that his supporters would want it suppressed. They did just that: The Majority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, essentially said no way should this information be released to the public. His political buddies fell into line and this intelligence was not released…and Hillary Clinton lost.  Might she have won if the information had been released that Trump was Putin’s puppet? I doubt it because most all of Trump’s voters would have refused to believe it and would have assumed that it was a Hillary Clinton trick. Now that it has been released, Trump claims that it is simply not true, that the CIA is not to be trusted because they insisted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. (Not true, that interpretation of the data was the Bush Administration’s, particularly Dick Cheney’s.)

Donald Trump is not an ingrate. You remember that Senator Mitch McConnell was a staunch resistor of releasing this potentially damaging information about the Trump campaign. Guess whose wife is now Secretary of Transportation in the Trump cabinet: Elaine Chao, McConnell’s wife.

The CEO of Exxon-Mobil, Rex Tillerson, is the new front runner for the premier Trump cabinet position, Secretary of State. We can safely move him from front runner to shoe-in because Tillerson is in a very cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin and any friend of Vladimir Putin is surely a dear friend of Donald Trump. Tillerson as an oil and gas man has helped Russia develop remote oil reserves and those developments have helped to increase Putin’s net worth. Putin is so fond of Tillerson that he awarded him Russia’s “Order of Friendship,” the highest award that can be given to a non-Russian citizen. Moreover, Putin made this presentation at his summer home. I’m sure Trump wants to cement further his cozy Kremlin relationship and there is no better way to do that than to make Tillerson his Secretary of State. If Tillerson is appointed maybe that will finally trigger some Republican backbone at confirmation time…but then maybe not!