Roger Stone got 40 months.

All federal sentences are done “per month,” and they generally follow particular sentencing “guidelines.” My math – which often doesn’t match the math used by most people – means that Stone would serve three years and four months.

As sure as I am both left-handed and poor, Stone will be pardoned, and I predict he will be pardoned by Trump this week. I am not betting on that because I can’t afford to lose a dollar. I will bet that Stone gets pardoned at some point because I desperately need a dollar, and I would win.

The Real Meaning of the Stone Case:

First, as usual, Trump is absolutely full of shit talking about Stone as if he’s just some regular guy who told a few “fibs” and then got dragged into jail by overzealous prosecutors.

F-THAT: Roger Stone lied many times to Congress because he HAD to lie in order to cover-up what he did with Wikileaks and stealing the emails to screw the 2016 election. He is not being punished for “lying” so much as he’s being punished for all the stuff he did to screw with the election, about which he could NOT tell the truth, lest he let the cat out of the bag and bring down a presidency. This is about stealing democracy, cheating, and covering it up.

Stone was not prosecuted for “standing up for Trump,” as Trump frames it. Stone was prosecuted for covering-up for Trump. THAT is why Trump MUST make this crime seem like “nothing.”

Trump’s Real Agenda

Trump’s bullshit about “others lying” and complaints about Stone’s prosecution are nothing but a pretext to pardon him. Everyone knows that Stone’s pardon is coming. This is outrageous and plainly something that would be incomprehensible behavior for a president prior to Trump. If Obama or Bush did what Trump has done with pardons, they’d both be impeached with huge bi-partisan consensus, because it used to be a big white line.

Trump – like a wife beater, didn’t start punching the wife an hour after the marriage. No, like the abuser, he’s wore us down first, to the point no one has any fight left in them. Only now are we getting the fist to the eye, the one we have to tell everyone that we “fell” – when they know, we’re in an abusive relationship and powerless. Trump is ready now, he’s going to pardon the man who cheated for him, his friend.

That has never happened before.

What it means going forward:

This is not about covering up 2016 near as much as it is about setting the playing field for 2020. Trump wants everyone to know that cheating is expected, indeed it is required. Have no fear about cheating, Trump will get you out of it, this is a fascist dictatorship now. Trump is the law. Remember, Russia has laws written in books, too. They also have trials, all that. They just don’t mean anything if Putin is interested. Same here.

Example: Trump knows that Stone didn’t do anything “really” wrong, but he does know that Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok (his personal enemies) did lie and do need to be prosecuted.

See? It is all personal – THAT is a dictatorship. It is a nation of “men” not of laws. “Who” you are is the only thing that matters when it comes to prosecution, at least with respect to national political matters. But even with older crimes, Trump will pardon rich white guys who committed similar crimes as he commits – it is now Trump’s nation, and he is the law.

Trump has set the table now and it is open season on 2020, no one has a thing to fear about “going too far.”

Our Best Hope Going Forward

God bless Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, they tried. Republicans other than Romney are co-conspirators. They will buy off the “jury” for Trump. The Senate is the reason that Trump is a dictator.

Our last best hope are the judges, who have definitely noticed, the people who protect the law.

The Judge in the Stone case hammered Stone first, in his arguments for leniency. She spent 3 hours going over the facts, laying a record stating precisely why this was a “serious” crime.

The judge cross-examined the federal attorneys, basically asking “WTF happened with this “new sentencing memo”? The judge knew damn well what happened, Trump tweeted shit. But she wanted to know the process within DOJ, who signed off on what. At one point, the DOJ attorney told the judge that he was not at liberty to answer who directed the change in the sentencing memo.

The judge didn’t push that answer any further, and didn’t say anything about sanctions against DOJ. But the judge absolutely has the ability to sanction the DOJ attorneys, report them to the bar, force them to pay a monetary fine, a judge has a lot of power to control the case in front of her.

IF we are going to be protected from Trump’s unilateral use of his personal power, it will be because judges stepped up, made orders, and put pressure on Trump to comply. He might not, comply with orders issued (he didn’t comply with Congressional orders), but he does so at his own risk.

Stone is just the next step in the fascist march.

We finished where we started. The Stone matter is the next step in the fascist movement that really picked up steam after the impeachment acquittal. This particular step is so obvious, so out in the open, so against tradition and what people expect of presidents that it really has people enraged.

I suspect it is culmination of all that’s happened in the last few weeks that is leading to an increasing boil. You can feel it. Republicans like John Cornyn are on record basically telling Trump to “cool it.” That is meaningful.

No, the MAGAs aren’t offended, nothing will offend them. But that’s not the point. There are 5-10% of voters in certain critical states that will determine Trump’s future, and thus our future. If Trump is frustrating or offending these voters, it does matter.

The thing that I fear the most, now that cheating is officially part of Trump’s official platform, I fear that Trump is acting like this because he has no fear at all of losing in 2020, not because he’s “so great,” but because he knows he has the election rigged.

The Stone case is so much more than just one guy being sentenced. It is one guy who covered up for the president, and will be rewarded for that cover-up by the most corrupt president of all time.

Trump continues to increase his fascist tendencies by the week, and this one truly does toss out any notion of rule by law. Trump has now interfered in a federal case. That’s it. Rule of law is over, and Stone will be pardoned before he spends 72 hours in jail – in my opinion. He’s not in jail yet, pending one last motion, but will be soon, and then he’ll soon be out.

And the band played on. No one rising up, hitting the streets, and demanding an end to this. Why there are not 5 million people in the streets in DC is beyond me at this point.

****

Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom