TRUMP is seriously dangerous

[Cordelia]

^^^
Get well soon 82! (Hospital stays are best treated as surreal experiences.)

[JackRiddler]

Though it is your biggest thread ever, it is a weird place to say it, but yes: Get well, man! What happened, if you can say? You recovering? Will you sling me some drinks if I ever visit?

[seemslikeadream]

Europe’s Leaders Confront the Worst Case Scenario: Trump

By JOSH MARSHALL Published MAY 29, 2017 12:10 PM
9329Views
This is a remarkable passage wherein the President of France compares President Trump to Putin and Erdogan, as cheap bullies that need to be stood up to. Macron told a French paper: “my handshake with him, it wasn’t innocent.” It was rather a “moment of truth. One must show that you won’t make small concessions, even symbolic ones, but also not over-publicize things, either.”


The even more stunning quote is translated in the write-up of the French language interview in The Guardian where Macron compares Trump to Putin and Erdogan.

The much commented-upon power play, during which each man held the other’s gaze for a long moment, was described by one observer as a “screw you in handshake form”. It ended when the US president, after two attempts, finally succeeding in disengaging.

“Donald Trump, the Turkish president or the Russian president see relationships in terms of a balance of power, Macron said. “That doesn’t bother me. I don’t believe in diplomacy by public abuse, but in my bilateral dialogues I won’t let anything pass.”

There’s been a lot of discussion about just what Donald Trump must have said in private during his trip to Europe. Obviously, he was seen in a very negative light by European leaders already. But there does appear to have been a shift since the meetings in Brussels. The most visible sign was German Chancellor Merkel’s statement that Europe can no longer rely on the United States. The feeling is running so strong in Germany that her main electoral opponent, SPD Leader Martin Schulz, felt compelled to make this statement attacking …


Some have argued that these statements shouldn’t be taken at face value, that they are meant for domestic consumption and may serve a domestic political end. That is no doubt right to at least some extent. But democracies run on their electorates. So it is ultimately a distinction without a difference.

So why the post-Brussels shift?

Trump’s speech alone is likely a sufficient explanation. But I suspect there’s an additional element. Most of the major European and NATO leaders had already met Trump in Washington – Merkel, May, Gentiloni, Trudeau and others. But I suspect in meeting as a group, over a more extended period and in a context specifically focused on Europe and NATO there was a further realization that what they are watching from across the Atlantic is no act. Indeed, Trump appears more impulsive and erratic in person than on TV. Rather than growing into the job he’s growing into the role of aggressor.

Another, perhaps more critical realization, is suggested in this Twitter thread by Max Fisher of the Times: That is, it’s not just that Trump is greedy or impulsive or unreliable, indifferent to the North Atlantic alliance but that he is positively against it. He and Vladimir Putin are in a de facto alliance against ‘Europe’ or to put it less geographically, the liberal internationalist state system which has rested on and built out from the United States and Western Europe. In this respect, we don’t need to concern ourselves with election tampering or ‘collusion’ or just what’s behind the relationship between the two men. The relevant issue is that they appear to be operating with common goals. Why that should be the case is, in this context, a secondary point.

Yet, secondary point that it may be, this realization can’t help but be confirmed by the increasingly bizarre and incriminating revelations out of Washington – the Kushner back-channel, the Comey firing, the Oval Office meeting with Lavrov.

The President of France is talking about standing firm with predatory autocrats. And one of them is the President of the United States.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/eur ... re-1061850

he is out of his fucking mind


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjI3EakOy-s

[cptmarginal]

General John F. Kelly is Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security. He is a retired United States Marine Corps general who previously served under Obama as commander of the US Southern Command, responsible for American military operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Before that Kelly was the commanding general of the Multi-National Force-West in Iraq, and the commander of Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces North. Kelly is also a vice chairman at the Spectrum Group, a defense contractor lobbying firm; and on the board of directors of two other private Pentagon contractors, Michael Baker International and Sallyport Global.

Well...

Lawmakers probe US contractor in Iraq sex trafficking case

By DESMOND BUTLER and LORI HINNANT, The Associated Press

May 23, 2017

WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressional investigative panel is demanding documents and testimony from an embattled U.S. defense contractor accused of failing to promptly disclose human trafficking on a base in Iraq.

An investigation by The Associated Press this month found that Sallyport Global fired two of its investigators after they uncovered evidence of the trafficking as well as alcohol smuggling and major security violations at Balad Air Base.

In a letter to Sallyport's Chief Executive Officer, Victor Esposito, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform ordered Sallyport to turn over an extensive list of documents and to make company representatives available to answer questions before June 9. The letter signed by the committee's chairman, Jason Chaffetz, a Republican, and top Democrat, Elijah Cummings, cited the AP's reporting.

"The allegations include prostitution, alcohol smuggling, timesheet fraud, concealment from Department of Defense auditors, and retaliation against employees whose duty it was to investigate these allegations," the letter says.

Sallyport Global Holdings was paid nearly $700 million in federal contracts to secure Balad Air Base, home to a squadron of F-16 fighter jets as part of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group.

In a statement, Sallyport Chief Operating Officer Matt Stuckart said the company looked forward to speaking to the panel.

"Sallyport takes any suggestion of wrongdoing at Balad Air Force Base in Iraq very seriously and strongly disputes the claims made by two former employees," said Matt Stuckart, Chief Operating Officer. "Since taking over operations January 2014, Sallyport has helped turn Balad Air Base into an instrumental part of the fight against ISIS."

In their letter, the lawmakers wrote, "Protecting American troops and facilities abroad is a solemn responsibility." They then raised concerns about the fired investigators' charge that the company shut down their investigations.

"Making matters worse, according to the report, Sallyport management short-circuited internal investigations and fired the employees responsible for them when they requested to interview Sallyport management suspected of wrongdoing," they wrote.

After the AP's report, the company denied the allegation that company managers had shut down an investigation into alcohol smuggling and human trafficking. They later acknowledged that after learning that the original probe had been stopped, lawyers had asked for a second investigation into new reports of prostitution on the base.

According to the investigators' original report in February 2016, four Ethiopian women who were suspected of working at a hotel in Baghdad as prostitutes moved to the base after customers at the hotel complained about contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Those customers included Sallyport employees, the investigators said.

The House panel is also scrutinizing allegations raised in another AP investigation that contractors have reported fraudulent data in a key military program to counter IS propaganda online.

Based in Reston, Virginia, Sallyport was founded in 2003 to work in Iraq on reconstruction, and has since expanded its operations globally.

This undated photo obtained by the Associated Press shows an Iraqi bodyguard hired by Sallyport Global to protect VIPs. When a Toyota SUV was stolen from Balad air base, he became the chief suspect and was linked to a dangerous Iran-backed militia and was viewed by investigators as “a hard-core recruit to become a terrorist who poses a serious threat to all personnel on this base.” (Photo via AP)

FILE - This August 2005 file photo shows the swimming pool at Balad air base as seen through the window of a Blackhawk helicopter. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg, File)

[SonicG]

To put another spin on this thread:

Doug Henwood‏
@DougHenwood

There are three empty seats on the Fed. Trump is destroying the institutions of bourgeois rule.

And no head of the FBI...Nobody wants the job!!
And a hollow State Department...

The Trump administration has selected candidates for at least two of the three open positions on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, according to people with direct knowledge of the decision.

The expected nominees include Randal K. Quarles, a Treasury Department official in the George W. Bush administration, and Marvin Goodfriend, a former Fed official who is now a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University.

In picking Mr. Quarles and Mr. Goodfriend, President Trump is seeking to install conservative counterweights to the Fed’s chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen. Both men have expressed reservations about the Fed’s aggressive efforts to revive economic growth since the 2008 crisis.

Mr. Quarles would also become a leading figure in the administration’s efforts to roll back financial regulation. He would be nominated to serve as the Fed’s vice chairman for supervision, with responsibility for overseeing the Fed’s regulatory responsibilities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/busi ... trump.html

But of course Trump has some fine fellows picked out for the fed! Can't let fiscal policy go untethered too much. Drain the swamp of regulations and give the boys some nice clean water to splash about in...We only have a few more years of fun left on this old rock, so let's bleed her dry and try to time the next mega-global-economic meltdown together with ecological collapse!

[seemslikeadream]

Trump Promotes Travel Ban, Criticizes London Mayor In Wake Of Attack

President Donald Trump talks to reporters during a meeting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, May 10, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Evan Vucci/AP
By ESME CRIBB Published JUNE 4, 2017 9:10 AM

President Donald Trump on Saturday and Sunday responded to an attack in London that killed seven people and wounded dozens more by promoting his travel ban and criticizing London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

Trump first acknowledged the attack, which Prime Minister Theresa May said “is being treated as a potential act of terrorism,” by retweeting the conservative Drudge Report.

In later posts, he promoted his travel ban (currently held up in court) and appeared to criticize a statement Khan made on Sunday in the wake of the attack.

“Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days,” Khan said. “There’s no reason to be alarmed.”

“At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!'” Trump tweeted.

He also appeared to to compare the response to the attack with the debate over gun control.

“Do you notice we are not having a gun debate right now? That’s because they used knives and a truck!” Trump tweeted.

The UK has very strict gun control legislation.

Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!
6:17 PM - 3 Jun 2017
46,214 46,214 Retweets 143,288 143,288 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K., we will be there - WE ARE WITH YOU. GOD BLESS!
6:24 PM - 3 Jun 2017
56,281 56,281 Retweets 206,997 206,997 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. If we don't get smart it will only get worse
6:19 AM - 4 Jun 2017
31,125 31,125 Retweets 88,714 88,714 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is "no reason to be alarmed!"
6:31 AM - 4 Jun 2017
31,208 31,208 Retweets 69,914 69,914 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Do you notice we are not having a gun debate right now? That's because they used knives and a truck!
6:43 AM - 4 Jun 2017
20,162 20,162 Retweets 62,295 62,295 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
A spokesperson for Khan responded to Trump’s tweets on Sunday, saying the mayor has “more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump’s ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks.”

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Follow
Matt Chorley ✔ @MattChorley
Sadiq Khan has "more important things to do" than respond to Trump's tweets, says an aide
8:42 AM - 4 Jun 2017
2,538 2,538 Retweets 3,734 3,734 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
This post has been updated.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/t ... don-attack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzlFNmJRUf8


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9VZTrtRhN0

[seemslikeadream]

Jared Kushner Once Allegedly Admitted That Donald Trump Lies to His Base Because He Thinks They’re Stupid

BY JACK MOORE

The president apparently doesn’t think very highly of his voters.

I cannot wait until the day comes when we can look at a Donald Trump–free White House and say, "Our long national nightmare is over." Of course, there's a solid chance that day will arrive because the sweet release of death has come to us following a barrage of bombs from countless foreign powers who had been deemed "losers" and "very low energy" in the last State of the Union. Anyway, that day is not yet upon us, and instead we're left with just another piece of news that would almost certainly make us laugh if it weren't for the fact that the future of the republic is in the (quite small) hands of an egotistical and bigoted maniac.
This tidbit comes from the former editor of the New York Observer, Elizabeth Spiers. As you probably know by now, the boy wonder–slash–rich kid whose stupidity and arrogance could help bring down the disastrous Trump administration, Jared Kushner, bought the New York Observer back in 2006. And as such, he had some conversations with the former EIC of said paper-turned-website. In one such conversation, Kushner allegedly revealed to Spiers what is obvious to most of us, but sadly not enough of us.

Elizabeth Spiers ✔ @espiers
My response to a right-wing blogger who called me a kook and a loser for stating that Donald Trump is a liar / water is wet:
1:16 PM - 28 May 2017
22,353 22,353 Retweets 50,660 50,660 likes

Let me emphasize that. Jared Kushner on Trump's birtherism: "He doesn't really believe it, Elizabeth. He just knows Republicans are stupid and they'll buy it." That's the president's most trusted adviser admitting to the fact that his father-in-law regularly lies to his supporters because he thinks they're dumb and will believe him. This is a man with no real morals, no real beliefs, but who is willing to peddle any sort of hatred or monstrous thought if he thinks that it will help him toward the nebulous goal of "winning."
And as frustrating as that is—and make no mistake, it is "punch a wall"–level frustrating—it's important to note that just because we know that he's lying to his base doesn't mean that we know what he actually believes. We are in a web of lies that is too tangled to decipher. And that's the scariest thing of all. A man who is constantly lying to everyone he meets is a dangerous man to represent the United States on the world stage. If other countries can't trust even the most basic of statements from our president, then we are in a terrifyingly unstable moment in history.
http://www.gq.com/story/jared-kushner-t ... l_facebook

[seemslikeadream]

half of trump tweet followers accounts are fake

Trump Criticizes His Own Justice Dept. In Tweets About Travel Ban

Evan Vucci/AP
By CAITLIN MACNEAL Published JUNE 5, 2017 6:59 AM

President Donald Trump on Monday morning lashed out at his own Justice Department for offering a “watered down” version of the executive order barring travel to the United States from certain majority Muslim countries after courts blocked the administration’s initial order.

Trump’s tweets about his so-called travel ban came after he promoted his executive order in a Sunday morning series of tweets about the weekend terror attack in London.

In the Monday morning tweets, Trump said that he wished his administration had fought for the original executive order and called on the Justice Department to seek a “much tougher version” of the travel ban. He also notably described the order as a “travel ban,” a term that his administration has dismissed.

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!
5:25 AM - 5 Jun 2017
8,015 8,015 Retweets 29,553 29,553 likes

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.
5:29 AM - 5 Jun 2017
5,723 5,723 Retweets 23,067 23,067 likes

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court - & seek much tougher version!
5:37 AM - 5 Jun 2017
5,377 5,377 Retweets 21,240 21,240 likes

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe. The courts are slow and political!
5:44 AM - 5 Jun 2017
6,770 6,770 Retweets 27,317 27,317 likes

Trump’s revised travel ban has been held up in federal courts despite the administration’s effort to craft a new executive order that courts might allow to proceed. The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court last week to reinstate the travel ban order.

The President’s Monday morning tweetstorm followed more tempered remarks about the London terror attack on Sunday night. Speaking at the Ford’s Theatre Annual Gala, Trump offer his support to the United Kingdom and said that the United States would try to help “bring those that are guilty to justice,” according to the White House pool report.

“We renew our resolve, stronger than ever before, to protect the United States and its allies from a vile enemy that has waged war on innocent life. And it has gone on too long. This bloodshed must end. This bloodshed will end,” Trump said, per the pool report. “As president I will do what is necessary is to prevent this threat from spreading to our shores.”

Travel Ban’ Buffoonery
To "ban" or not to "ban."

MAX BOOT / JUNE 5, 2017

It’s clear that President Trump really, really wants his “travel ban” to become a defining issue for his administration. His Justice Department just filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court asking the justices to overturn lower-court decisions preventing his executive order from taking effect. The question is: why?

His desire for this executive order seems even more divorced now from the actual requirements of fighting terrorism than it was when first issued on January 27. Trump inadvertently illustrated this himself on Saturday when, just minutes after a terror attack in London, he tweeted: “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!” He then implied that it was only political correctness that was stopping the ban from being implemented. “We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people,” the president wrote. “If we don’t get smart it will only get worse.”

Mind you, there was no evidence when he wrote those words that the terror attack on London Bridge was carried out by citizens of Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, or Yemen, the six countries affected by the ban. Indeed, there have been no terror attacks carried out anywhere in the West this year by citizens of those states. Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber, was of Libyan extraction. He was born in Britain and was a British citizen, and, therefore, would have been free to travel to the United States even if the travel ban were in effect.

The original justification for the executive order on January 27 was that the United States was at such heightened risk of attacks from foreign jihadists that it was necessary to place a 90-day suspension on all entry from seven Muslim countries (Iraq was later dropped from the list). The speciousness of this justification is evident from the fact that, 129 days later, there still have not been any Islamist terrorist attacks in the United States. There hasn’t even been any evidence of foiled plots carried out by nationals of the six target countries.

Surely, Trump isn’t claiming that we need a 90-day pause starting now because his administration hasn’t been able to study the problem and issue an effective response during the previous 129 days? That would be quite an admission of failure on the administration’s part. In reality, of course, all of the evidence points to the fact that our border vetting programs were already effective when Trump took office and didn’t need much reform.

Yet the president continues to agitate for his “travel ban”—in the process making a mockery of his aides’ attempts to claim that it’s not a travel ban. (On May 28, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly insisted on Fox News that “it’s not a travel ban, remember. It’s the travel pause.”)

On Monday, Trump bizarrely blamed his Justice Department for submitting a “watered down, politically correct version” of the ban to the Supreme Court—when he was the one who signed the watered-down version in order to try to pass judicial scrutiny.

The original order had affected existing visa holders, causing chaos at the airports; the new version did not cancel existing visas. But with these tweets, Trump is undermining his chances of success in the Supreme Court. He is furthering suspicion that his goal all along is to enact some version of his obviously unconstitutional proposal from December 2015 for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” Even Dick Cheney said that a Muslim ban “goes against everything we stand for and believe in.”

What can explain Trump’s fixation with a travel ban? Perhaps he still doesn’t understand the issue. Perhaps the president, unable to move his legislative agenda through Congress, is intent on throwing symbolic red meat to his supporters. Perhaps he doesn’t really care whether his ban is enacted and would prefer, in fact, for it to become a martyr for his populist politics so that he can try to scapegoat the judiciary for the next terrorist attack in the United States.

Who knows what he’s thinking? The only thing that’s clear is that we don’t need a travel ban to keep us safe, and agitating for one is a distraction from the true challenges of counter-terrorism. Rather than grand-standing on this issue, Trump would be better advised to take steps to win the confidence of Muslims so that they will be more likely to inform on potential terrorists in their midst.
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/amer ... mp-tweets/

good luck with the supremes trumpy

Trump Stomps Planet Earth
Maureen Dowd
Maureen Dowd JUNE 3, 2017

President Trump approaching a lectern on Thursday to discuss how he would protect the country from a disaster: the Paris climate accord. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — We’ve been conditioned by Hollywood to see the president of the United States step up to the lectern to confidently tell us how he will combat the existential threat to the planet — be it aliens, asteroids, tidal waves, volcanoes, killer sharks, killer robots or a 500-billion-ton comet the size of New York City.

So it was quite stunning to see the president of the United States step up to the lectern to declare himself the existential threat to the planet.

And with a calming band playing us to our doom, just like on the Titanic.

You know you’re in trouble when beclouded Beijing, where birds go to die, replaces you as a leader on climate change.

America is living through a fractured fairy tale, in the grip of a lonely and uninformed mad king, an arrogant and naïve princeling, a comely but complicit blond princess and a dyspeptic, dystopian troll under the bridge.

American carnage, indeed.

On climate change, the troll, Steve Bannon, got control and persuaded Donald Trump to give a raspberry to the world. Bannon had better watch out or rising waters will wash out his bridge to the past.

Even though Jared, Ivanka, Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson, Elon Musk, Bob Iger and Lloyd Blankfein pressed the president to stay in the Paris climate accord — which is merely aspirational about the inhalational — Bannon won the day because Trump loves to act like the fired Mr. Met.

As his biographer Tim O’Brien recalled on ABC’s “This Week,” Trump once pointed out a dozen six-foot-high speakers by the pool at Mar-a-Lago blasting classic rock and said: “You know, when I moved here to Palm Beach, nobody wanted me around. And I love cranking this music as loud as I can because it bugs the heck out of all of these so-and-sos and I love it.”

It is a familiar pattern. “He wanted to get out of Queens to come to Manhattan,” O’Brien said. “He wanted to be accepted by the real estate class in Manhattan, but then he thumbed his nose at them.” He wanted to run for president as a Republican and get the G.O.P. establishment’s approval, but then he thumbed his nose at it.

The same with The New York Times, seeking favor and then dubbing us “failing.” And now it’s the turn of our aghast European allies.

The more he is labeled a boor and a brute by his critics at home and abroad, the more Trump digs in, trying to drag America back to a time when black smoke belched, women scrambled for birth control, sick people were out of luck, reefer madness reigned and Cuba was shunned.

Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.

In the year 2017, the American president is leading us into a bold new future, saying he can’t wait to party hardy at “a big opening of a brand new mine.”

Trump was goaded in the direction of dropping out of the Paris accord by a couple things that irritated him.

As Mark Landler and Michael Shear reported in The Times, Cohn, the president’s chief economic adviser, had told reporters in Sicily that Mr. Trump might be coming around. “His views are evolving” on climate change, Cohn said. “He came here to learn. He came here to get smarter.”

That smarted and made Trump want to blast classic rock.

Then the president read an interview with Emmanuel Macron in a French newspaper, bragging about how he had prepared to give Trump an Iron Man grip because it was “a moment of truth” showing that he “won’t make small concessions, even symbolic ones.”

Comparing Trump to strongmen Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Macron made it clear that he was determined to face down the bully, pushing back hard on Trump, just as he would a few days later with Putin. He scolded the Russian president for his state-controlled media’s “lying propaganda” and warned that France would use military force if Putin’s ally Bashar al-Assad unleashed chemical weapons on civilians again.

As Ashley Parker, Phil Rucker and Michael Birnbaum reported in The Washington Post Thursday: “Hearing smack-talk from the Frenchman 31 years his junior irritated and bewildered Trump, aides said. A few days later, Trump got his revenge. He proclaimed from the Rose Garden, ‘I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.’”

Whether Macron is being coached by his wife, whom he met when she was his drama teacher in high school, is not clear. But he understands the signs and symbols of power.

Trump is the president with a background in entertainment, but the 39-year-old French president is the one who has mastered theatrics, from the splendor of “Ode to Joy” playing at the Louvre on election night as he made his slow victory walk, to his steely six seconds of arm wrestling with Trump, to his dramatic swerve to embrace Angela Merkel, leaving Trump nonplused and waiting to shake his hand, to his dressing down of Trump’s pal Putin at Versailles, to his televised exhortation aux barricades on Thursday in English: “Make our planet great again.”

As The Times’s Adam Nossiter wrote, Macron has a “deeply held belief that France in some sense has been missing its king since the execution of Louis XVI on Jan. 21, 1793.” And he has consciously cultivated a regal air as he champions “radical centrism,” globalization and protecting the environment. The Post dubs him “the prince regent of Paris and Pittsburgh alike.”

Trump, on the other hand, has rattled the world with his crude manner, cruel policies, chaotic management style, authoritarian love-ins and antediluvian attitudes, cementing his image as the highchair king.

For once, the French have a right to be condescending toward the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/opin ... earth.html

[SonicG]

“We renew our resolve, stronger than ever before, to protect the United States and its allies from a vile enemy that has waged war on innocent life. And it has gone on too long. This bloodshed must end. This bloodshed will end,” Trump said

[seemslikeadream]

so what time does the Reichstag Fire start?

[Luther Blissett]

Seriously...what's going on here?

http://breaking911.com/developing-stran ... ite-house/
http://news.forexlive.com/!/red-lights- ... o-20170529

Just a reflection??

Some CIA-invented memory eraser for the Kush??

Incredible. And of course I fear the neo-nazi storm brewing in trump country a little more than I fear trump himself, I'm still shaken by what he's capable of when cornered and alone, especially when it comes to terrorism.

Why is he "alone"? Why aren't all these other authoritarian yes men, plutocrats, and televangelists rushing to his side to ingratiate themselves and seize power?

[SonicG]

I dunno...blame it on the age of the metrosexual nazi...

[SonicG]

We'll see your Kathy Griffin and raise you one Clay Higgins:

The free world... all of Christendom... is at war with Islamic horror. Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals. Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter. Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identity them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.

"suspect"

We are all suss=pect

Susssspect Devices!



Don't be bitten twice!

[seemslikeadream]

Eric Trump funneled cancer charity money to his businesses, associates: report
By LAUREN PEARLE RILEY BEGGIN Jun 7, 2017, 5:57 AM ET

Eric Trump is slamming a Forbes report that alleges his charity, the Eric Trump Foundation, has been funneling donations -- from donors who believed the money was going to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital -- to the Trump Organization by paying high sums for use of Trump properties during fundraisers and re-donating some funds to charities friendly with Trump interests.

Forbes reported Tuesday that the Eric Trump Foundation paid the Trump family business hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last seven years for use of one of the organization’s golf courses, funds which he claimed were being donated nearly in full to the children’s cancer charity.

"We were able to come up with this concept of raising a lot of money with really no expense and it's because we were incurring the expenses at the assets we were taking on the expenses as Trump. We were using our own facilities," Eric told donors in a promotional video.

According to IRS filings, the Eric Trump Foundation in 2012 spent $59,085 on its annual Golf Invitational fundraiser held at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York -- money that skimmed from donations to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. Those expenses ballooned to $230,080 in 2013 and to $242,294 in 2014, according to the filings. It is unclear from these tax forms how much of those payments went to the Trump Organization.

Forbes reported that in 2011, costs for Eric Trump’s golf tournament fundraiser tripled because his father realized that the organization had not been charging for the event and there were no bills to prove it. The Foundation declined to provide Forbes with an itemized list of expenses for the tournament.

Charity experts told Forbes that the amount paid to the Trump Organization for a golf tournament fundraiser for St. Jude’s "defy any reasonable cost."

The increased costs for the tournament coincided with changes to the Foundation’s board in 2010, when it changed from being made up of mostly Eric’s personal friends to those closely connected with the financial interests of the Trump Organization, according to Forbes.

The tax filings also show that the Eric Trump Foundation made a 2014 payment of $87,665 to another Trump property, the Trump National Golf Club in Washington, DC for fundraising events.

In addition, the Forbes report claims that Eric Trump's charity redirected some donations. More than $500,000 was given by the Eric Trump Foundation to other charities, "many of which were connected to Trump family members or interests," according to Forbes.

In a statement released Tuesday, a spokesman for the president's son defended the Eric Trump Foundation.

"During the past decade, the Eric Trump Foundation has raised over $16.3 million for St. Jude Children’s Research hospital while maintaining an expense ratio of just 12.3 percent," the statement reads. "The Eric Trump Foundation was also responsible for building a $20 million dollar ICU which treats the sickest children anywhere in the world suffering from the most catastrophic terminal illnesses."

The statement continues, "Contrary to recent reports, at no time did the Trump Organization profit in any way from the foundation or any of its activities. While people can disagree on political issues, to infer malicious intent on a charity that has changed so many lives, is not only shameful but is truly disgusting. At the end of the day the only people who lose are the children of St. Jude and other incredibly worthy causes."

And as Forbes points out in its report, “Altruism as a business-development strategy isn't necessarily illegal. But a situation in which outside donor money is redeployed away from the core mission in ways that seem to ultimately benefit the family that pays the majority of the board is -- at best -- an appearance problem."
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/eric-tru ... d=47878610

Greetings from Griftopia!
The Emoluments Clause will truly be put to the test during the Trump presidency.



It's for the Kids. The Money. After We Take Some.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
JUN 6, 2017


Meanwhile, in the other precincts of the Camp Runamuck empire, we have a new way to monetize the brand while Pops remains a half-step ahead of the law. And, yes, it's as tacky as you might expect it to be. From the NYT:

On Monday, the Trump Organization announced plans for a new three-star hotel chain with a patriotic flair, echoing President Trump's campaign slogan about putting America first and reflecting the organization's promise to enter into new deals only in the United States. The intention is to differentiate the chain, called American Idea, by featuring artifacts of American culture in the hotels, such as an old Coca-Cola machine in the lobby or American-made sundries in the rooms.
Why do I see in my mind an endless queue of recent immigrants who bought franchises only to discover that the price of the American Sundries was a lot higher than they expected?

(Which reminds me, the president* can't seem to find an outside lawyer, because a lot of the usual high-priced D.C. mouthpieces are afraid to take him on as a client, because he will neither shut up nor pay up. Repping the president used to be the golden ticket to a career as a Beltway power player. Disruption!)

Apparently, one of the animal-murdering spalpeens found the complimentary breakfast at a Hampton Inn out of Froot Loops one morning and decided that there was an entirely new constituency of traveling rubes out there to be gulled.

And while the Trump Organization and its business partner say the down-market move is not about politics, the president's business is inherently viewed through that lens: The chain will make its debut in little-known towns in Mississippi, a state in the heart of Trump country that favored him over Hillary Clinton by a margin of 18 percentage points. The organization's business partner in Mississippi is a family-owned hotel company whose co-owner met Mr. Trump at a campaign event last summer and donated to his campaign. This new chain is an unlikely venture for a company commonly associated with luxury accommodations in upscale locations, and it indicates that the Trumps see dollar signs in the vast support the campaign received from conservative areas well beyond major cities. The first hotels are expected to come online quickly because they will involve rebranding existing properties like Holiday Inns and Comfort Inns.
And here's the interesting part of it all.

Mr. Danziger, a longtime hotel executive who previously led Wyndham Hotels, said the first American Idea hotels would open in the Mississippi Delta, but he rejected the idea that the electoral map of 2016 would become a blueprint for picking future locations. Mr. Trump sometimes hands out a version of the map to White House visitors, showing blue dots in and around major cities (indicating support for Mrs. Clinton) and wide stretches of red (signaling votes for Mr. Trump) nearly everywhere else.
Now, there is no greater Yankee devotee of the Mississippi Delta than me. If you haven't stood outside the iron gates of Parchman State Prison and been terrified, or watched as the loose cotton rides the breezes like snow, or heard a harp and guitar blasting from somewhere down the road, you haven't truly lived as an American. However, you know what else the Delta has these days?

Casinos.

A whole bunch of casinos.

Which have proven to be pretty much the scams they've turned out to be every time they've been sold as an economic panacea to distressed areas. The last time I was there I saw an enormous woman with oxygen tubes up her nose feeding quarters into the slots while wearing a T-shirt that read, "Jesus is the answer." I also saw a billboard that read, simply, "Sell your car for cash." No address. No phone number. I figured it was just a suggestion. So the family's buzzard-ish instinct for economic and social carrion remains pretty sharp. And there's always Russian and Saudi money if things get dicey.

Emolumentary, my dear Watson.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/po ... ap-hotels/

[hanshan]

...


http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/06/26/trump-khashoggi-germanys-criminal-deutsche-bank/

multiple links & pics at site

Trump, Khashoggi, & Germany’s Criminal Deutsche Bank

Posted on June 26, 2017 by Daniel Hopsicker


It is public knowledge that two well-known customers of Deutsche Bank have deals considered sensitive to scrutiny. One is Donald Trump.

The other is—or was— Adnan Khashoggi.

The death of Saudi arms dealer and CIA fixer Adnan Khashoggi in London two weeks ago reminds the world again about Adnan Khashoggi’s rich history with fellow Palm Beach ‘homie’ Donald Trump.

Not just in yachts—as interminably reported in obituaries— but in banks.

Khashoggi spent 40 years in the intermittent glare of worldwide publicity, from the Lockheed bribery scandal in the 1970’s, Iran Contra in the 1980’s and BCCI, the Bank of Crooks & Criminals, in the early 90’s, to name just a few.

Had he lived a bit longer, he would likely become famous again, especially if Deutsche Bank continues to stonewall the Congressional probe into why the bank—alone among major banks worldwide—was willing to loan $300 million dollars to Donald Trump, a man who’d stiffed investors by declaring bankruptcy six times.



A continuing criminal conspiracy



Deutsche Bank loans to Donald Trump are relatively well-known. Just google “Trump and $300 million.”

On the other hand, Adnan Khashoggi’s business dealings with Deutsche Bank—except in certain circles—are not.

But Adnan Khashoggi’s criminal collusion with Deutsche Bank offers clues to Trump’s own, and may provide evidence supporting prosecutorial use of the three words many defendants fear hearing: “Continuing criminal conspiracy.”

The urgency of such an investigation was made clear in today’s Washington Post report detailing how Deutsche Bank gifted Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner with a $285 million loan just one month before Election Day.

It’s ironic that Khashoggi, a notorious fame whore, will not be around for the fun part just beginning; the part where, when actor Hal Holbrook in “All The President’s Men” stands half-hidden in shadows in the middle of the night in a parking garage in Washington D.C. and whispers to Robert Redford that he should “Follow the money.”



This wasn’t Adnan’s first rodeo.

Journalists who track the underhand dealings of international fraudsters have long been well aware of Khashoggi and his assorted partners in crime, including infamous stock fraudsters in Vancouver.

As a former American security official who knew him told me, “He didn’t get involved in all those scandals by singing too loud in church.”

How the financial press covered it:

“Deutsche Bank settled a lawsuit filed against it by to recover losses incurred as part of a massive securities fraud allegedly orchestrated by the German financial giant, a fugitive Saudi arms dealer and other individuals that bankrupted the Minneapolis-based securities firm.”

“A Minneapolis brokerage Stockwalk subsidiary called MJK Clearing became insolvent after losing more than $200 million in a series of risky deals that involved borrowing and lending securities. Regulators took over MJK Clearing and forced it into bankruptcy.”

Khashoggi, an acknowledged stock fraud master, ran an intricately planned and spectacularly-successful pump and dump scheme that, with assistance from the Russian Mob and the Mafia—two organizations who also partnered with Trump—stole more than $300 million in just a few years.



The Khashoggi-Deutsche Stockwalk scam

Khashoggi and Deutsche Bank partnered in what became called the Stockwalk scandal, colluding in what were, financially-speaking, more innocent times.

Stockwalk was called “the most massive stock fraud in American history,” and it became the largest liquidation of a securities firm in U.S. history.

It was basically an ingenious financial game of musical chairs, during which Deutsche earned sizable fees, passing around stock normally settled in boring brokerage back offices as a bookkeeping function.



Only this time, the brokerage left standing when the music stopped, Minneapolis’ Stockwalk Group, was left holding $200 million of worthless stock in a Khashoggi company called Genesis Intermedia, now worth just pennies.

Earlier Genesis stock had been pumped up as high as $26 dollars a share by Khashoggi’s cronies, before everyone in on the joke cashed out and went home.

When the scam collapsed in 2001, the poor Minneapolis brokerage filed for bankruptcy and went under. 200 employees lost their jobs. Khashoggi and his chief lieutenant, Ramy El Batrawi, went home at least $130 million dollars richer.



What Really Happened

Deutsche Bank’s little Khashoggi indiscretion cost the bank a record $280 million dollar fine in the U.S. The bank settled shareholder lawsuits worldwide out of court, paying $350 million dollars in cash, while nonetheless denying responsibility.

U.S. officials scoffed at the bank’s claim of innocence.

“Full recoveries just don’t happen,” said Ken Caputo, senior associate general counsel for litigation at the The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). “You’re hard pressed to find anybody with money to provide recompense. You might get judgments. But these guys paid in full.”

As for Khashoggi? “Well, no one knows just where he is, Caputo said. “He’s one of those elusive guys.”

From the New York Times:

”El-Batrawi, Khashoggi and others also drove up the price of the stock by engaging in large numbers of buys and sells,” the S.E.C. said in the suit. ”The buys and sells were often done in small lots of 100 to 500 shares, amplifying the false appearance of general investor interest.”

“Lawyers for Mr. El-Batrawi and Mr. Khashoggi could not be immediately located for comment. An S.E.C. lawyer, Kara Brockmeyer, said the agency had not determined who their lawyers were. Mr. El- Batrawi has no listed telephone number in Los Angeles, and Mr. Khashoggi’s whereabouts is unknown.”



They became the object of what—with hindsight— was doubtlessly a half-hearted search. Even so, finding Khashoggi and his chief lieutenant proved elusive.

Later, a Palm Beach resident who’d clashed with Trump over Indian gaming (which Trump at the time was against) told me the rumor locally had been that Khashoggi, also wanted at the time in the collapse of a bank in Thailand, was hiding out in a bungalow at Mar-a-Lago.



Deutsche Bank-HSBC race to the bottom

Germany’s Deutsche Bank has been in a race with HSBC Bank in London for the title of World’s Biggest Criminal Bank, based on the size of fines each pays to host governments who—who knows?—may even be mildly chagrined at being unable to bring individual bankers to justice.

Deutsche Bank has paid more than nine billion dollars in fines and settlements since 2008. The bank paid up after getting caught conspiring: to manipulate the price of gold and silver; defraud mortgage companies; violating U.S. sanctions against illegal trading; more.

Deutsche Bank was caught manipulating the London Interbank Rate, or Libor, the uber-interest rate banks charge one another; (it paid a two and a half billion dollar fine.)

Deutsche Bank’s own staff blew the whistle in 2010, accusing the bank of masking twelve billion dollars’ worth of losses. One of the whistleblowers, a former risk analyst, told the Securities and Exchange Commission that if the bank’s true financial health had been known in 2008, it might have collapsed.

“There was cultural criminality,” the whistleblower told reporters. “Deutsche Bank was structurally designed by management to allow corrupt individuals to commit fraud.”



“Mirror, mirror, on the wall…Just launder my money already”

In January, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $630 million in fines over a sophisticated-yet-simple money laundering scheme called mirror trading, used to launder—just in recent years—more than $60 billion out of Russia.

Lawmakers are seeking information about Deutsche Bank’s latest scandal: a Russian “mirror trading” scheme that allowed $10 billion to flow out of Russia in sham trades. One Deutsche customer would buy Russian stocks for rubles, while selling an identical amount of stock to a related customer for dollars.

It was instant money laundering. No need to add water.



What happens if they come for the furniture?

There’s an unexamined downside in demanding explanations from Deutsche Bank for its unexplained benevolence towards Donald Trump, the ominous prospect that during Trump’s however-brief time in office, the American people will endure a national embarrassment unequalled in history.

Because he was desperate for money, in his loan dealings with Deutsche Bank Trump broke one his own cardinal rules.

Gulp before you read this: he personally guaranteed the loans. Donald Trump is personally on the hook to Deutsche Bank for roughly $300 million. The debt—on a Florida golf resort, a Washington D.C. hotel and a Chicago tower—is currently being paid.



But if the loans default, the bank could go after Trump’s other assets. Americans may be witness to the horrible spectacle of watching a bank foreclose on a sitting President of the United States.

The White House, at least currently, appears to be safe.



Get aboard the Money Train



Deutsche Bank is desperately trying to keep the money train running from Moscow to New York (and perhaps to Donald Trump), in the face of demands by Democrats in Congress for Trump’s banking records.

Deutsche Bank politely demurred, claiming privacy laws prevent turning over records of loans made to Trump of reportedly $300 million, with loan guarantees in excess of $1 billion.

Lawmakers fired back that Federal laws protecting banking customers’ confidentiality do not apply to requests from Congress, said a letter they sent to Deutsche. “Given President Trump’s repeated assertions that he does not have ties to Russia, such disclosure would be in his interest.”

Here’s an anecdote that may help explains the Trump-Russia investigation, and it’s not even about Trump.

It’s about the wife of Raul Salinas, the brother of Carlos Salinas, the wildly-corrupt former President of Mexico, who was arrested in Switzerland on November 15, 1995. She’d been trying to withdraw $84 million from a safe deposit box at a private bank in Geneva.

A Swiss police official asked why’d made herself conspicuous. Why was taking so much at once, he asked, instead of taking a little at a time?

Paulina Salinas replied, “But I was taking a little at a time!”

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