The Trump Presidency

Sounds like another company that needs to get flushed

 

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as/re Impeach Trump:

I have come to the conclusion that those who would wish for Trumps impeachment most likely fall into one or more of the following three categories.
They are either:
A) really really stupid
B) they are completely ignorant of our constitution
C) they are super right wing(read Koch brothers) nutjobs who would rather have Pence(who is the Koch brothers bought and paid for boy) running the show

(to borrow from the fiddler)
May the lord bless and keep the czar president far away from here.

 

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And those who pay attention to the implications of not impeaching Trump - having learned the obvious lesson from Nixon (pardoned), Reagan (never seriously threatened), and W&Cheney (never even questioned under oath): If this is not impeached, indicted, beaten, it takes over. It doesn't go away.

When the country - confronted with the origin and nature of the Iraq War - decided to just ride out the last few years of W&Cheney's administration, then let bygones be bygones in the aftermath, nothing actually went bygone. It settled in, became normal, rooted.

The Trump voter - the Republican Party - has over the past thirty years or so cornered the US government; or rather the US has allowed itself to be cornered.

With Nixon they got rid of the corrupt VP first, replacing him with somebody harmless and then taking down the big dog.

 

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Is it that you're unwilling or unable to explain how, aside from being just another lazy, ill-intended conservative, that framework is actually supposed to work?

 

The constitution does allow for impeachment.

 

I thought I'd generate this little meme in light of DT's comments regarding the recent mass shooting :

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It will be interesting to find out the amount of arms sales in dollars that can be attributed to Trumps brinkmanship. ( sales technique)
eg.
Saudi - Qatar - Iran - Yemen - Israel
ISIL - Syria - Iraq - Turkey - Kurdistan
Nato alliance - Ukraine - Russia
North Korea - global - Japan - South Korea - Australia - India - Malaysia

Confrontation/brinkmanship must be good for business!

Perhaps Young Kimmy is getting a kick back, after all, he is making the USA a mint or two...is he not...

 

Paradise Papers?

 

Impeachment is being charged & tried by congress. It does not necessarily mean being removed from office.
What do people think Trump could be charged with?

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I did a little reading and it seems to be really difficult to impeach or even remove a president from office.

In England they have solved this problem, by instituting "a vote of no-confidence" which may remove a prime minister on grounds of having displayed an inability to govern.

Of course this does not apply to the Crown, which implies that the US Presidency is (has become) tantamount to a form of Royalty.

 

For starters obstruction of justice. Lost in the daily dung that is the Trump presidency he flatly admitted to Lester Holt that he fred Comey because of the Russian investigation. To say nothing of what he's trying to hide which must be big. That giant Russian laundromat he's running for the oligarchs of Russia is my guess.

 

Yes, but actual criminal behavior is covered under "high crimes and (high) misdemeanors", such as "obstruction of justice", but that is still no guarantee that congress will proceed with such action. Don't forget, that Trump can always fire Mueller, and we'd have to start all over again.

 

#PutiTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor​

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Dominion: Click for #MotherRussia.​

One of my quiet jokes in all this has been an if/then question: If we see Puti-Toots, then who else does Papa Bear have hooks in? The joke originates in the early weeks of the Trump administration, as important minor officials we generally don't pay much attention to resigned, looked as if they were being forced out, and drew attention by publicly announcing their retirement and explicitly disclaiming they weren't being ousted. The thing is that it kept sounding like, "If I'm not going to be allowed to do my job, they can replace me with someone who will tank on cue."

It's kind of a scary joke, actually.

Even scarier, though—

—is another if/then, and this an observation: If Donald Trump was actually an active agent of a foreign country operating in the White House, then he wouldn't behave much differently than he already does.

I'm of the opinion that Donald Trump is some manner of unwitting asset. Think for a moment, just in political terms, for instance, of the damage he did when he made how many of his staffers accesssories to obstruction in the Holt interview. Vice President Pence is allegedly not so bright; he was a perfect dupe in this context, not at all capable of comprehending the scale of his own bizarre lie about NatSec Flynn. Republicans and conservatives have for years bawled about the dangers of government and corruption, have made restoring faith in government an occasional banner plank. The mere fact of the Trump presidency will haunt future presidents, especially Democrats, because haven't Republicans always told us government just doesn't work? Imagine redecorating Obama-era oppositon against the next Democratic president because, well, look at what Trump just did. And the argument will find instant forty to forty-five percent support in the marketplace just like how many other stupid swindles Republicans get away with in targeting the lowest common denominators of American society.

But, yes, think of the damage he did, just in political terms, by the Holt interview, essentially tacking his entire comms shop to the shed for obstruction. And then, yes, we might compare and contrast, the juxtaposition of the political alongside the actual societal damage that comes with destroying the myth of noblesse Americana. It's just strange that the people who clung to and demanded the lie for so long are the ones to drive the stake. For the rest of us, it's almost like they never believed a word they were saying.

But that's the point. Conservatives find short-term political value in polarizing the People against governance. Foreign adversaries find short-, middle-, and long-term value in polarizing Americans against their government. President Trump need merely keep being himself, it seems, because he and his family and the Republican Party just cannot seem to help serving Lord Puti-Toots and Mother Russia by simply wrecking the place.

And wrecking the United States of America, its prestige and promise and influence, is part of the point. Puti-Toots needs it, the GOP has been trying for decades, and Puti-Trump is the perfect celebrity idiot with the sort of family values that appear to actually envy criminality.

It's all grotesque, but we should not forget that the longer this goes on, the less Americans trust the proposition of government, or the fact of these United States of America, the more Republicans have fulfilled a generation, at least, worth of promises.

 

C

Accessory to hacking efforts by a foreign power.

 

A synopsis, from those trying to make sure nobody forgets that we've seen post-Nixon Republican administrations before this one;

that this is not normal, but also that this is not new - it's main channel Republican, vintage 1980 and points north, south, east, and west of Ground Reagan. To mix a metaphor.

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2017/11/remember-bush-plan-for-iraq.html

 

The hits will never stop:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13515798/michael-flynn-turkey-deal-15-million/

 

#corruption | #WhatTheyVotedFor​

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​

President Trump appears to be hit today from two directions, Reuters and NBC News. Last night, on msnbc, Rachel Maddow began promoting Richard Engels' apparent scoop to be broadcast tonight. Today, Engel's name appears on an article about Trump operations in Panama and ties to organized crime, noting an NBC News investigation working with Reuters↱, who offer up their own exclusive article. The focus is a man named Alexandre Ventura Noguiera and a building in Panama City:

An NBC News investigation into the Trump Ocean Club, in conjunction with Reuters, shows that the project was riddled with brokers, customers and investors who have been linked to drug trafficking and international crime. Ceballos, who investigated the project, went as far as to call the skyscraper “a vehicle for money laundering.”

The investigation revealed no indication that the Trump Organization or members of the Trump family engaged in any illegal activity, or knew of the criminal backgrounds of some of the project's associates. But Ventura said that the Trumps never asked any questions about the buyers or where the money was coming from.

Legal experts contacted by Reuters said the Trumps should have asked those questions. Because Panama is “perceived to be highly corrupt,” said Arthur Middlemiss, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and a former head of JPMorgan's global anti-corruption program, those who do business there should perform due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they fail to do so, he told Reuters, they risk being liable under U.S. law of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.

(Petropuolos and Engels↱)​

The question is one of due diligence and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, among others:

Trump put his name to the development and stood to make up to $75 million from it, according to a bond prospectus for the project. He did not exert management control over the construction and was under no direct legal obligation to conduct due diligence on other people involved.

Still, some legal experts say the episode raises questions about the steps Trump took to check the source of any income from there. Arthur Middlemiss, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and a former head of JPMorgan's global anti-corruption program, said that since Panama was “perceived to be highly corrupt,” anyone engaged in business there should conduct due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they did not, he said, there was a potential risk in U.S. law of being liable for turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.

Jimmy Gurule, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and a former under-secretary for enforcement at the U.S. Treasury Department, agreed. He also said any businessman should avoid working with “anyone with a potential link to criminality” simply as a matter of good ethics.

Reuters could not determine what due diligence Trump carried out in relation to the Ocean Club project.

(Parker, et al.↱)​

Apparently, Ivanka Trump "was so taken with his sales skills" that she helped Noguiera become leading broker for selling apartments in the Trump Ocean Club; he has since been accused of even triple-selling units, and the Reuters article with six names in the byline explains:

A Reuters investigation into the financing of the Trump Ocean Club, in conjunction with the American broadcaster NBC News, found Nogueira was responsible for between one-third and one-half of advance sales for the project. It also found he did business with a Colombian who was later convicted of money laundering and is now in detention in the United States; a Russian investor in the Trump project who was jailed in Israel in the 1990s for kidnap and threats to kill; and a Ukrainian investor who was arrested for alleged people-smuggling while working with Nogueira and later convicted by a Kiev court.

Three years after getting involved in the Trump Ocean Club, Nogueira was arrested by Panamanian authorities on charges of fraud and forgery, unrelated to the Trump project. Released on $1.4 million bail, he later fled the country.​

Furthermore, the Trump Organization chief legal officer, Alan Garten, has asserted, "No one at the Trump Organization, including the Trump family, has any recollection of ever meeting or speaking with this individual." As you might expect, then, the photos obtained by Reuters become just precious.

The larger problem for the Trumps is yet another appearance of being involved with precisely the sort of people an American business is not supposed to work with, and the beginning of a response cycle that, as we learn simply by attending the Trump presidency, means they're lying to us.
____________________

Notes:

Parker, Ned, Stephen Grey, Stefanie Eschenbacher, Roman Anin, Brad Brooks, and Christine Murray. "Ivanka and the fugitive from Panama". Reuters. 17 November 2017. Reuters.com. 17 November 2017. http://reut.rs/2zOTtzF

Petropoulos, Aggelos and Richard Engel. "A Panama tower carries Trump's name and ties to organized crime". NBC News. 17 November 2017. NBCNews.com. 17 November 2017. http://nbcnews.to/2yQRWrD

 

Among the consequences of electing, and then failing to impeach, this President:
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/th...f-trumps-latest-unqualified-judicial-nominee/

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amph...t-trump-has-come-unhinged-the-truth-is-worse/

Let that sink in a moment... our President, the one that has to deal with a seemingly nuclear-armed and capable North Korea, "calls confidantes to boast about his successes” and is so out of touch with reality that he is, once again, "questioning the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate."

*lights a cigar* Welp 'Merica, it's been a good run...

 

Since this wasn't bolded, repeated for emphasis:

This worries me more than Trump's personality. It's not him at the base of it, and it's not going to go away when he does.

 

IMO, it Capitalism itself is causal to economic disparity.
The purest form of Capitalism is slavery. It is the most economical way to get things done at the least cost.
Slavery is cost-effective.

Thus today it is not so much as racism (negros are only 3/4 of a person). Today race makes no difference, it has been extended to everyone who is "poor".

The point is that the poorest people will work for the lowest wages and to a corporation that is good for the bottom line and the dividends to the "owners" of the corporation, which scotus has declared a person in and of itself. But corporations have no moral obligations, their function is to create profit.