Trump

Day 707 Friday December 14, 2018     884 Days to Go

DATELINE: Mexico City

For those of you who have been reading my screeds you probably know I’m in Mexico right now. We got back to Mexico City from visiting various Aztec and pre-Aztec sites in the area a few days ago. Yesterday, we visited the ruins of the major Aztec temple in central Mexico City, The Temple Mayor. It was rediscovered in the 70s and they tore down a city block above it to expose some of what is left. This was the center of the universe and even the remains are very impressive. I was here in the late 80s or early 90s and there was a little bit to see then, but not much. Last year they opened a new museum on the site and it is fabulous, (if you like ancient Aztec stuff).

In my room last night I ran across this article:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/10/17929460/paul-ryan-speaker-retiring-debt-deficits-trump 

It outlines Paul Ryan’s political legacy as it relates to his economic ideas and fiscal policies. Anyone who has read my screeds probably knows that I think very little of the boy-wonder. Anyone who creates a document called a budget and doesn’t put in any numbers except page numbers is an idiot, and Paul Ryan qualifies. Remember when Obama went to Baltimore to see the Republicans who had gathered there? John Boehner was holding Paul’s budget to his chest like some Hasidic rabbi holding the Torah. Fox carried the proceedings live, because it was 400 some odd Republicans versus the black President. Obama took a copy of Ryan’s budget, opened randomly to a page and read “an item.” It was a wishy washy statement of what, I guess, Ryan would like to see done – sort of. After Obama read the paragraph he looked up and said, “You can’t govern based on this,” or words to that effect. He was met with dumb struck silence. It seemed to me that no one had bothered to open the big government document and look at what was in it. Shortly thereafter Fox found more important things for the girls with blond hair, short skirts, and tight blouses to report on.

The Vox article lays out Ryan’s economic legacy:

– Leaves an increased annual deficits over three years by 80%. This in a time of economic growth. (btw When an economy is doing well, government deficits should come down, but not with fiscally responsible Paulie at the wheel.)

– Will increase the national deficit over ten years by $1.5 trillion.

– And wants to make those changes permanent so the deficit will increase by $4.0 trillion instead of the $1.5.

This from a man who ran on cutting the deficit and reigning in spending. When asked about it Ryan said essentially, “Yeah, I wish we could have done something about that.”

Done something about it? You were in charge! You idiot. He’s acting like he was watching a parade go by, and he was standing on the sidewalk waving a flag. He was on the front of the beer truck leading the parade, which wandered aimlessly around the halls of Congress.

884 Days to Go

PS The kid at the center of the universe. 

Day 693 Friday November 30, 2018    898 Days to Go

Yesterday, I said I thought we were entering a new phase of the Trump presidency and today it arrived.

This clearly shows I am a genius.

So today I have a modest proposal (thank you Mr. Swift.)

If you are still a Trump supporter after hearing yesterday’s news I suggest you and Mr. Trump and his whole gang pack up and go join Mr. Snowden and Mr. Seagal in the country that has embraced them. In this way you’ll make room for all the people at our border who actually want to live here and will learn about citizenship as a part of their entering this country and will be loyal to the United States, unlike the current president.

Yesterday we learned that Donald J. Trump while candidate for president was attempting to secretly bribe Vladimir Putin with a $50,000,000.00 gift* and in exchange Trump would build a tower with money from a Russian bank that was sanctioned by the U.S. government. (That means a U.S. business can’t do business with that bank. And – oh by the way – it is tightly tied to Putin.)

*okay, it’s was to be a luxury apartment in Trump Tower Moscow and probably only worth half a million but the claim was fifty.

So let’s list Trump’s CV shall we?

Businessman with four bankruptcies and broke in the 1990s,

Liar,

Fraudster,

Scammer,

ForeFlusher,

Traitor,

…

This is a guy that has surrounded himself with people of questionable character all his life.

This is a guy who has only run one public company and it failed (“But I made a lot of money.”)

This is a guy who as a business practice stiffs the people he hires, be it tradesmen or lawyers.

This is a guy who is described by his own lawyers “as incapable of telling the truth.”

Oh, so what did we learn yesterday?

Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. He told Congressional Committees that the Trump Tower Moscow deal was over and dead in January of 2016 when in fact negotiations went on until June of that year.

The timing is interesting. On June 6^th 2016 was the famous Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and the Russians. On June 14^th the Trump Tower deal was dead.

Is there a connection?

You bet you ass there is.

Trump had been trying to build a tower in Moscow for years. It looked like this time he was close to accomplishing that with the help of Michael “I’d take a bullet for Trump” Cohen and Felix “break martini glass and shove stem in your face” Sater. Sater was negotiating directly with Putin’s spokesperson and offered a $50M penthouse in the yet to be built Trump Tower Moscow to Putin. Just to be clear, in case anyone doesn’t understand, this is bribery. It is called bribery. It is bribery. Bribery is a crime. People go to jail for bribing or being bribed. 

People also go to jail for doing business with sanctioned banks.

What’s the connection? (Sorry, I got distracted.) Well, it seems the purpose of the June 6^th meeting, as far as the Russians were concerned (and by this I mean Putin) was to signal that they were no longer interested in dealing with Trump on a business basis but rather they wanted to start dealing with him on a political basis. (“You want I steal email? I steal email. Okay?”)

It turns out the big bald dumb Matty Whitaker was informed that this was coming down. He didn’t or wasn’t able to muck it up.

He won’t be long for that job if he keeps that up. Hurry up Mat climb aboard the boat bound for Russia, you putz.

We still don’t know what will happen next. There is much talk about Trump going to the G20 and whether he’ll met with Putin. (He will take the meeting. Maybe, Trump will say something like, “Hey, I bumped into him in the hallway. What was I supposed to do? Not take an unscheduled 90 minute meeting with no one there but Putin and his Russian translators?”)

What will be said in the meeting? Many will report that we won’t know, but you my readers, you will get the first transcript of sound bites from that meeting (“There was no meeting”) meeting (“Well, we bumped into each other. That’s it. No meeting.”) meeting.

With my unique “Forward Listen Ahead Sound Detection System” (FLASDS – pronounced “Vlads”) I can now give you some sound bites from the soon to be held meeting (“There was no meeting!) meeting.

Donald Trump (DT) – “This looks bad.”

Vladimir Putin (VP) – “No worry. You doing great job.”

DT – “You think so?”

VP – “You doing great. Trust me.”

DT – “I don’t know. Michael …”

VP – “You want maybe he should have unfortunate accident? It can be arranged.”

DT – “What? No. You can do that?”

VP – “Of course. It happens all the time. Very unfortunate.”

DT – “No. Better not. Not after MSB.”

VP – “You mean MBS?”

DT – “Whatever. It would look bad.”

VP – “You worry too much. You doing great.”

DT – “You think so?”

VP – “Trust me.”

Communication lost. 

898 Days to Go

PS Getting Squeezed

Day 692 Thursday November 29, 2018       899 Days to Go

I believe we are entering a new phase of the Trump presidency. One thing I can say for sure, we humans are bad at predicting the future. However, there is some history that can help to show what happened in the past.

First, let me review the recent events that have led me to my conclusion:

1. Jerry Nadler (D NJ) was on one of the morning shows the other day and he said, “There are impeachable offenses that are not crimes; and there are crimes that are not impeachable offenses.” There are, of course, crimes that are impeachable offenses. 

2. We just had a mid-term election where the Democrats had the largest victory in history and have taken control of the House of Representatives.

3. Big Donnie Trump finally got around to doing his homework and answered the Special Prosecutor’s questions.

4. Paul Manafort’s plea deal fell apart. He via his lawyer was giving information about what Mueller was doing to Trump and Trump’s lawyers. Something that Trump’s lawyer, Rudi Giuliani admitted. Manafort was acting as a double agent ostensibly to get a lighter sentence from Mueller and to get a pardon from Trump. Trump has said that a pardon for Manafort is “not off the table.”

5. Trump fired his AG and put in place a man who is unconfirmed by the Senate. This is a no-no, especially in light of the fact that this man has admitted he wants to shut down the Mueller investigation or starve it of funds.

6. Evidence and news reports have linked the Russian GRU to Wikileaks’ Julian Assange holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and to Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and James Corso. Thus showing a path between the email dumps of the Russians via Wikileaks and the Trump campaign and showing that Corso and Stone had advanced knowledge of the Wikileaks dumps. 

7. There is the infamous Trump Tower meeting in which Don Jr. and many high level people in the Trump campaign were in attendance with Russians, some of whom had direct connection with the GRU. Right after that meeting Don Jr. made a phone call to a blocked number. Trump Sr. has a phone whose number is blocked and he took a call about that time. Remember prosecutors don’t believe in coincidence.

Okay so that’s what’s been happening in terms of this administration but also interestingly there are some investigative reporting and ancillary stories, which lead us to speculate as to what will happen next, and in an unbelievable tidbit that no one has mentioned yet the kid (that’s me) will reveal a revelatory little sumtin’-sumtin’, which on it’s face isn’t much, until you link it into the rest of the historical record.

A. Rachel Maddow has a seven part podcast called “Bag Man,” which tells the story of Spiro Agnew and his extortion schemes that led to his resigning as VP ten days before the “Saturday Night Massacre,” which was the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency. (Interestingly, the AG at the time was Elliott Richardson who resigned rather than do the President’s bidding that Saturday night. Ten days before he forced the Vice-President of the United States from office. The man who eventually did the dirty work for the President was Robert Bork, and it was that action probably more than any other that scuttled his becoming a Supreme Court justice.)

     Although Agnew pled nolo contendere (Latin “no contest”) to one count of tax fraud there was a forty page summary of all the crimes he had committed.

B. Nixon was forced from office by a memorandum that went on page after page listing his crimes associated with Watergate. These included collusion, obstruction of justice, interfering in a criminal investigation, bribery, and witness tampering. Aside from his crimes listed in that memorandum it has also come to light that he committed treason.

Now we get to Trump and what’s going on with him, his lawyers, and his administration. One opinion writer said last night that his lawyers seemed to suffer from “Incompetence and Hubris.” I’d throw in ignorance but maybe I’m splitting hairs because incompetence and hubris may well be another way to say ignorance in this case.

But before we get to all that let’s look at one – no two – little tidbits of legal wrangling.

Tidbit 1 – A local DC bar lost its complaint that they can not fairly compete with a bar in a hotel own by the President of the Untied States. They lost the argument because they couldn’t show direct harm. (Just suspicion?)

Tidbit 2 – (My sumptin’-sumptin’) This reminded me of a case ten or twenty years ago involving a golf driving range. It was along the Dulles Access Road corridor. The local government opened a similar facility and the plaintiff argued that they were doing things to give themselves preferential treatment and he could not fairly compete. He quoted one of the clauses from the Magna Carta as part of the basis of his complaint. 

Tidbit 3, (tying together Tidbit 1 & 2, with the today and the history of Agnew.) When Agnew pled guilty to tax evasion he walked out of court a convicted felon but otherwise free. Some folks were outraged. Where’s the jail time? Why didn’t he have to repay the money he got?

One group so outraged were some law students who with their professor brought a civil complaint in Maryland against Agnew. They demanded he repay the money he got while Governor. They won and Agnew had to write a check for $268,482.00 ($147,500 in kickbacks and $101,235 interest.) Because of that trial his personal lawyer had to testify, and said that he knew years before of the scam because Agnew had told him. (They had asked the then Governor, Marvin Mandel, to bring the suit, but he refused. It was later found that he too had been on the take.) To bring the case they had to find a basis and they dug through the laws and found a principle of British common law (much like the golf course owner.) A legal principle that said a plaintiff could bring a suit even if they did not have the government’s support. They found taxpayers to be their plaintiffs.

So where are we? What will happen next? What have we got?

Here’s where predicting the future comes in, and doing so is terribly fraught.

In Donald Trump we have a man who has openly committed crimes. Let’s take a simple straightforward one, bribery. Bribery is defined by Black’s Law as “offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an individual or other person in charge of a public or legal duty.”

Therefore dangling a pardon to influence a witness or defendant is bribery. It was one of the crimes Nixon was accused of doing. Trump has said that pardoning Manafort is not off the table. Is that bribery? Yes. Others say no, it was just the president expressing what his Constitutional powers are, to which I say, “bull shit, it’s bribery.”

Having Manafort report what he’s learned about the Mueller investigation to Trump via his attorney while under a plea deal is collusion (excuse me, it’s conspiracy). Yet, here is Giuliani. Trump’s lawyer saying in public, oh yeah, Manafort was telling us what was going on. Trump’s lawyer is openly admitting that they colluded (excuse me “conspired”) with each other.

These people, Trump and his gang, are committing the most outrageous acts and crimes against our government and yet those in his own party are mute about it. How bad does it have to get? How much worse can it get?

What is surprising about Trump, and really shouldn’t be anymore, is that just when you think things have gone as low as they can he goes lower. 

I guess to misquote Michelle Obama, “When we go low, we go lower.”

Egads.

Another little tidbit, it has been pointed out that Nancy Pelosi won the nomination of her party to be Speaker of the House with more votes and fewer dissenting than Paul Ryan did when his party elected him Speaker. However, the headlines – then and now – paint a different picture. While the Ryan headline just says he was nominated; the Pelosi headline mentions dissension.

  899 Days to Go

PS Lamanai, Belize