So, have I mentioned my internet’s been up and down the last while like a hookers knickers? Almost 6 weeks now, but on Saturday night went down completely, I was forced to amuse myself by other means.

Oh boredom, and the muses that one goes seeking in the places where you used to play, but that damn device lured you away.

It was a reminder, really, a reminder that it is so easy to forget how precious boredom can be to our creativity, how vital it is to watch, listen to something new, or again do something you used to do. To seek and reach for new ideas, and with all the many things you can discover online, sometimes all you really need is an antenna.

So it was while listening to something on the CBC radio that I was reminded that time will etch some names in the annals of history with all their dirty deeds dragging like toilet paper from their shiny designer shoes. That comforts me, really, my soul smiles a Cheshire Cat grin, smug, watching their feeble attempts to distract, yet somehow the truth always catches up, try as some might to run from it.

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

― Frank Herbert,Dune

For many of us, most of us, our name will probably only grace our memorial stone, a few lines in the obit pages of the local paper, but little more will remain of us. However, for others, their names and deeds, misogyny, hate speech, and ineptitudes, their paralysis in the face of a manufactured crisis, all will be recorded in history through that somewhat warped lens.

But, I also know the world isn’t fair. I know that children die because they were not cared for properly, people go without who should be fed and clothed and housed, offered asylum graciously, and good people with ethics and morality get stomped on daily, and that is how it is. We suffer, all of us, to one degree or another living is suffering. As the Buddha teaches, it is our response to that suffering that is important, that is the only thing we sometimes control.

Wise sages, after all, say that what you give out into the world you will get back three-fold, whether your deeds be good or bad, positive or sad, karmas’ a b!tch.

Speaking of karma, a little tidbit of important news trickled out today, while everyone’s head was turned away to watch the POTUS in the Oval, his ex-campaign chair Manaforts lawyers were involved in their own self-imposed f@ck up. Apparently, in an appeal doc or some such, they forgot to redact the important bits detailing out what exactly it was Manafort was accused by Mueller of lying to him about. BOOM.

Paul Manafort, former campaign chair for U.S. President Donald Trump, shared polling data during the 2016 presidential campaign with a business associate accused of having ties to Russian intelligence — and prosecutors say he lied to them about it, according to a court filing Tuesday.

The allegation marks the first time prosecutors have accused Trump’s chief campaign aide of sharing information related to the election with his Russian contacts. Although the filing does not say whether the polling information was public or what was done with it, it raises the possibility that Russia might have used inside information from Trump’s Republican campaign as part of its effort to interfere with the election on Trump’s behalf.

CBC | Manafort shared polling data with Russian contact during U.S. presidential campaign, court filing says | Posted: Jan 08, 2019 5:19 PM ET

So, em, no ties at all to Russia der rumpTus, eh? None at all? Zilch? Or, maybe 1 or 2, 3, 4, 5… heck, maybe everyone involved in the campaign had one tie or another to Russia, and this here is starting to connect the dots into what some call a multinational conspiracy to help Trump get elected.

I mean, why else would the Kremlin be interested in polling data from the U.S. elections? Maybe pass that along to their troll farm, use that data to better target American’s with their divisive campaign to snow U.S. citizens into believing garbage that was manufactured by the Russians, propaganda to create division and stow unrest, and certainly keep the Americans too busy to be bothered with whatever they’re up to?

Heck, I bet they thought, if the guy actually gets in, what a coup to get rid of those rotten sanctions, eh? Bonus. Trump being president I think was just a long shot back in early 2016 or whenever they first got involved, the original motivation was merely probably to sow unrest and have a friendly conspirator or two inside the beltway they could use, infiltrate themselves inside in order to, well, create unrest but also to get closer in order to influence votes in favour of Russia’s concerns, like sanctions, trade, the middle east, you know, all the stuff.

Emails previously reported by The Associated Press and other news outlets show that in July 2016, Manafort told Kilimnik he was willing to provide “private briefings” about the Trump campaign to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Manafort dangled the briefings as he was mired in a dispute with Deripaska over a multimillion-dollar deal involving a Ukrainian cable company.

ibid

Now we are beginning to get a bigger picture of what transpired at the meeting in Trump Tower in 2016 with the Russian Lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya, also attended by Trump Jr, Kushner, oh, and Manafort.

Yeah, so that lawyer was charged.

Ms. Veselnitskaya, a pivotal figure in the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election, was charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with seeking to thwart an earlier investigation into money laundering that involved an influential Russian businessman and his investment firm.

The money-laundering case was not directly related to the Trump Tower meeting. But a federal indictment returned in Manhattan seemed to confirm that Ms. Veselnitskaya had deep ties to senior Russian government officials and rekindled questions about whether the Kremlin tried to use her as an intermediary to Donald J. Trump’s campaign.

The New York Times | Veselnitskaya, Russian in Trump Tower Meeting, Is Charged in Case That Shows Kremlin Ties | By Benjamin Weiser and Sharon LaFraniere
Jan. 8, 2019

For obvious reasons, of course, the president likes to insist NO COLLUSION.

Fine, let’s call it coordination, shall we, that him and his cronies coordinated with Russia to help him get elected. That is what happened, it’s not exactly hidden, the pieces are falling into place, and the picture is becoming clear, just a matter of time before Mueller puts the fancy bow on to tie it all up.

col·lu·sion
/kəˈlo͞oZHən/
noun
secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.

More or less the perfect definition.

So, not exactly surprising that the man is all gung-ho to distract everyone with some manufactured border crisis, eh? Sort of makes more sense, given that he is the president of the United States and one would assume his lawyers are well aware of all that’s going on in regards this investigation.

Tell ya another thing that comes to mind is that it’s certainly not just Trump with bad taste in lawyers, I mean we only know this because of some lawyers mistake. Although that is sort of suspicious, but whatever.

So, in the end, that whole address from the Oval Office really was just some elaborate con, as his minions I guess got emails begging for money to finance the wall, but with fine print indicating the money goes to his campaign for 2020. What a creep.

But anywho, internet is sort of up, but in the morning before work, I did another one of those things that one does when the internet is annoying the f@ck out of you, go for a longer walk before work, down to Thames Park, to enjoy the rare brief glimpses of sunshine on offer.

That’s one of the things I love about the village, the beautiful places on offer to distract, destress, and Irish got more sniffs in, so she’s happy to.

Here are some of the pics I took.