Lucky 13

     Everything about this was predictable.
     It was predictable that, according to DC tradition, the news of Mueller's grand jury handing down indictments for 13 Russians would be dumped on Friday.
     It was predictable that Mueller's Justice League would find and present enough evidence to sway the grand jury to indict.
     It was predictable that Donald Trump's response would engage in more lies in rebuttal. The roar could be heard all the way from Air Force One 35,000 feet in the air as Trump headed for another weekend of golf in Mar-a-Lago, followed by the sounds of stubby little fingers typing on a cell phone.
     It was predictable that Trump would drag Hillary's name into it.
     It was also predictable that Trump would lash out against his own national security advisor, Gen. H.R. McMaster for his comments in Germany last Saturday about the indictments.
     And it was all too predictable, not to mention bottomlessly despicable, that later that same night Trump would use the deaths of the 17 Floridians in Parkland to blame the FBI for spending too much time investigating him over Russia.
     For the first time since his improbable "election", Donald Trump has to confront the reality that the Kremlin and not the love and adulation of the American people, that Russian dirty tricks and collusion got him in the Oval Office and not his personal charm and dashing good looks.
     Here's what the "failing" NY Times said right below the lede:

The Russians stole the identities of American citizens, posed as political activists and used the flash points of immigration, religion and race to manipulate a campaign in which those issues were already particularly divisive, prosecutors said.

      Agitprop, in other words.
     The indictment takes up 37 pages, essentially refuting everything Trump has said regarding Russia's role in meddling with our last election. Now, in the spirit of fairness, keep in mind the grand jury's indictment does not conclusively prove collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign. But this is just another wave of charges in what will prove to be many. And keep in mind the truism that the FBI doesn't go after individuals: They go after organizations. And if anyone will sniff out that smoking gun, it's Robert Mueller.
     And Trump's assertion that the Russians began plotting to help him before he'd ever decided to run for the presidency is pure bullshit. He ran in 2012 and signaled for quite a few years before and after that he wanted to be president. And wow, how coincidental is it that the Russians launched their campaign two years before Trump launched his own, starting the very same year (2013) he went to Moscow to host the Miss Universe pageant? It makes far less sense that the Russians decided to help Trump before he'd declared his candidacy than it is to conclude that the Russians, starting with Putin, TOLD him to run, making him literally a Manchurian Candidate.