Did President Trump add $33 million to Puerto Rico’s debt by bankrupting a golf course there? No? Not really? Not if we’re being fair?
Okay, maybe we shouldn’t say that then. Right?
Maybe we can have the Russians say if for us on Facebook instead, and we can help them target it to the most persuadable registered voters we need to win in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Or maybe we can just make shit up and say that Trump has HIV and paid for thirty abortions. Maybe some foreign country will spread those rumors around for us. Maybe we can tell anyone who asks about the rumors that we don’t know if they’re true or not.
Maybe Trump’s mother was a prostitute and he was born in an outhouse. Maybe it doesn’t matter whether someone fact-checks this.
Maybe we play by one set of rules and the other side thinks that rules are for suckers.
No, Trump isn’t responsible for adding to Puerto Rico’s debt. On the other hand, who can say?
Well, it’s a fact that “many people are saying it”. And “someone I talked to the other day, a person who should know, a very smart person, told me about it, too.”
Who, you ask? Well, just look for yourself. It’s out there. It’s so true. Very true. Only the fake media will never tell you about it, but it’s true. Look it up. Of course, you probably don’t want to know it’s true. You call it a rumor, but there’s lots of reporting out there on this. Lots of reporting, if you look in the right places. People are talking about it. And it’s a horrible, horrible thing, what these people have done. Horrible. People should go to jail over this. Why has no one gone to jail? This is a disgrace. People are outraged. So sad. These are horrible, disgusting people. And that’s what the media should be reporting. But the fake media will never do that. Never. So sad.
I agree. I saw some of those stories. He basically stole the money you know. My cousins are all talking about this and they are pissed, since they voted for him. But you are right about it. The story is out there. What a lousy person does this?
Wow, Mike– That is so on the mark that you could work part time as Trump!
I guess smartass mimickry is my thing! 🙂
for it here!
“Maybe Trump’s mother was a prostitute and he was born in an outhouse.”
Trump’s birth certificate states OFFICIALLY that Trump was born in a hospital in JAMAICA.
Explains why Trump is such a jerk chicken also, too.
Post-Factual America?
Post-Factual World!!!
I been tellin’ ya and TELLIN’ ya!!!
Believe only what you can prove out to your own satisfaction.
Everything else is now subject to question.
Everything!!!
Just clickbait.
AG
My God, Arthur, go away, go away, go away.
Or if you won’t go away, at least do this: before you post your next comment, think. Think about the others who post here: do they really warrant your condescension, your scolds, your first-grade-teacher reprimands?
Are we really the sort of people who would be amused or impressed by pictures of Bugs Bunny or Emily Litella? Who enjoy seeing the word “that” written as “dat”? Who need posts divided into one-sentence paragraphs, Dr. Seuss style, as if we were children? Is it possible you’re misreading your audience? (Or, as you’ve admitted, are so so solipsistic that you disregard all voices here but your own?)
Is your personal sense of uselessness, irrelevance and impotence so important that you need to vent that frustration here — and so childishly?
Before you respond with another defensive volley about how “being insulted by someone like me is an honor” or some such, please think. Why do you do this?
You occasionally have interesting and thoughtful things to say. Can’t you dispense with this irritating, cartoonish pose and just participate like a normal adult? Thank you.
Objection, your Honor; “normal adult” assumes facts not in evidence.
You bet your ass.
You “normal adults” turn my stomach.
Bet on it.
AG
. . . define any phrase (e.g., “normal adults”) circularly to mean whatever serves my purposes for it to mean (e.g., whoever opposes me), then self-righteously declare that they “turn my stomach”.
Never mind that my self-serving re-definition has nothing whatsoever to do with what the phrase actually means here within the English language.
Bet on it.
“normal adults” are what Malvina Reynolds was talking about when she wrote “they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same”.
“normal” is nothing to aspire to.
You write:
You “normal adults” (Translation: Middle-class, college-educated, white so-called “progressive,” so-called “adult” Democrats who speak and write like a network newscaster or talk-show host) are largely responsible for having gotten us into this particular Trumpist predicament. Why would I want to emulate your act, your way of communicating? You all thought D. Trump was some kind clown, to be laughed away as the “private and public positioning” HRC as(
s)-cended to her rightful place in the White People’s House, High Queen of all the Good People.I got news fer ya, Bunky. My gradual evacuation from white middle-class standards started in high school and continued apace until I finally saw the various truths of the matter after I returned from a month-long performing tour of Vietnam and Bangkok during the Vietnam War. We landed in Honolulu during prime holiday season, and the sight of all of those fat, ugly Americans in ill-fitting Bermuda shorts spending money like it was water almost made me puke!!!
And a week later we went to play in Las Vegas.
The HORROR!!!
So I moved to NYC and dropped the fuck out.
Completely.
No more Mr. White Guy.
Bet on it.
How I write to you…my long-lost class of white, middle-class compatriots…is how I talk to the people with whom I work as a musician….a multi-racial, multi-class, multi-every goddamned thing group of dedicated cultural outlaws.
You don’t like it?
Don’t fucking read it.
I no longer give a shit, going on 50 years and counting.
HRC had her “deplorables?”
OK…I have my “unreachables.”
So it goes.
I do keep trying, though.
Why?
Because I believe in evolution.
You don’t like it?
Devolve on.
Or…wake the fuck up.
Like everything else worthwhile in this world…you either do it or you don’t. The best I can do is to speak to you frankly.
So that goes as well.
WTFU.
You been had.
Later…
AG
Many people were warning that Strongman Trump was a real danger. And we were warning that, for example, shitting on Hillary Clinton in public every chance they got might increase the chance that Strongman Trump could sneak into office. I mean, holy fuck, she’s been attacked by the right-wing and progressives for the past 30+ years.
The. Fascists. Don’t. Need. Any. More. Help.
Because saying that BothSidesDoItTM and convincing people to believe it doesn’t necessary equal a vote for Strongman Trump, but a vote for the SpaceJesus/ZombieWashington ticket, or staying home, is the same thing in a First–past-the-post voting system that currently exists here in objective, observable reality.
And many of us were routinely castigated as neoliberal neocons. Here. Over and over and over. Regardless of how absurd it was to apply the neoliberal neocon label onto us just because we weren’t shitting on HRC in public every chance we got.
It was, in fact, a BothSidesDoItTM argument masked with polysyllabic words that essentially gloss over a massive chasm of differences between left-of-center Democrats and right-wing Authoritarian-approved fascists.
Getting bogged down in arguing with your ally who agrees with you on 99% of any given policy because they aren’t willing to saw off the steering wheel and throw it out the window in game of zero-sum chicken d/b/a the 2016 Presidential election is missing the forest for the trees. Pardon the mix of metaphors and cliche phrases.
The Meta aspect of this blog is that there are likely many times as many people who read the blog and comments, than actually post themselves. Which means that this is, to some extent, an actual news/media source. As much as HRC wouldn’t be on my top 10 list of Presidential candidates, she was a few light years better than Strongman Trump. To not acknowledge that, or as I saw multiple times, imply that, perhaps, HRC would be w̶o̶r̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶B̶u̶s̶h̶ worse than Trump was patently ridiculous…and of course, at least partly “responsible for having gotten us into this particular Trumpist predicament.”
So, directing your fire only at people who spent all their time attacking Strongman Trump here, as being a part of the problem, totally ignores the people who actually made semi-subtle arguments that the most liberaliest voters with the most bestiest EthicsMoralPrinciplesTM could, somehow, stand upon the shoulders of lesser Democrats and vote their conscience in “safe” blue states. Which of course means voting for the Unicorn/SparkleBunny ticket, or just staying at home…because principles and stuff.
Once the better candidate dropped out of the Democratic primary…there really was no alternative. And yet, some people argued differently. If you aren’t willing to include them in the list of people who got us into this Trumpist predicament, then you aren’t really telling it like it is. You’re simply forwarding the preferred narrative of the people who literally argued that, in some ways, HRC would be worse than Strongman Trump so go vote accordingly…wink wink nudge nudge.
#HRCsShootingWarWithRussia
And so it goes.
I actually think that HRC would have been “worse than Trump,” n1cholas. This country is very ill. Taking an HRC pill would simply have prolonged the illness, just as did the Obama pill. With Trump, the illness is coming to a head.
Coming to a crisis.
Becoming progressively more and more evident.
I personally think that we are headed for a U.S.S.R.-like breakup.
We are too powerful, too rich and…as always in the case of empires…too corrupt. An old Italian proverb perfectly covers this situation:
We have our Nero, and we have gotten exactly what we deserve.
With illness, after the crisis comes either healing or death.
I hope it’s healing, but I am ready for either.
You?
AG
Tell that to the Puerto Ricans. I’m sure they’ll be comforted by those words.
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
Bertrand Russell
more apt than it is to ag’s “contributions”, to this thread and generally.
Exactly the problem with his “program”, recommended somewhere upthread: (roughly paraphrased) don’t trust/believe anything you can’t directly confirm yourself. The problem being that requires residence within the Reality-Based Community coupled with a broad knowledge base, critical-thinking/-reading and reasoning skills, and discernment, all skills/qualities ag obviously lacks.
Meanwhile, he continuously deludes himself that he’s the only one here possessing them. The irony is too thick.
Part of the ongoing, worsening crisis in the national disease, DD. As are the riots in cop-dominated cities, the ongoing wars and interferences in many other countries, the whole banking/financial scam and the whole domestic Health/Drugs/Big Pharma/Big Insurance/Big Food/Big Miseducation/Big Corp ripoff.
It’s Puerto Rico’s turn in the barrel. I am no more…and no less…sorry for the residents of Puerto Rico today than I am for the residents of our awful ghettos in the U.S., especially the children who are suffering horribly in the ghetto school systems. I know this for a personal, observed fact, because my best friend has been teaching in the lower grades in some of the worst of them for the past several years. She comes home crying regularly, crying out of sheer frustration.
I would not trust HRC to do any more for Puerto Rico than has been done by Trump. Or Barack Obama, for that matter. Remember, it was under Obama’s rule that Puerto Rico went bankrupt. HRC would just be…smoother…about it. It’s all about the money, anyway. Her public side would do the political hustle, but her private side belongs to Wall Street, and Wall Street does not give two shits about anybody who is not contributing mightily to its insanely profitable set of scams. It will just take them off any way it can and then walk away to leave them to their own misery.
Of course, Houston will get emergency money, because Houston is important to the corporate world. Oil, don’tcha know. They wage wars over it.
But simple, hard working people?
Do not buy into the massive anti-Trump hype from the media, no matter what is being used as an excuse to criticize him. If he was part of the establishment instead of trying to take it over, the same media would be whitewashing him the same way that they whitewashed Obama. Trump is bad enough without the constant hype from the establishment media. All that is really resulting from the anti-Trump barrage is that many people are now beginning to realize that the entire media system is rotten to its core.
Which is a good thing.
And the national illness continues to evolve into a crisis state.
As it must.
Thank Trump.
That’s not exactly what he had in mind…he just wanted to take over from the other diseases. But…he may just turn out to have been the cure.
Let us pray that this is the case.
Watch.
AG
All of this is beside the point, which was very simply that there is an immediate crisis caused by natural disaster (Hurricane Maria) and that neither the White House Occupant nor the GOP controlled Congress appear equipped to handle. The coverage is there for anyone who wishes to read or look, and need not be smeared as anti-Trump (a funny thing for alleged progressives to be concerned about – seriously? alleged anti-Trump bias is something we should be outraged about? Jesus Christ on a cracker!). The coverage, to repeat, is there for anyone to read or look, and is available from multiple sources. The US government’s response has sucked, as in GWB’s Katrina response but worse. People are without drinkable water still. People who need electricity for little things like dialysis and so on don’t have that available. And all the White House occupant can do is sit on his ass at his golf resort. Pathetic. There is no way in hell that a Trumpster (or an HRC hater) can convince me that HRC would have bungled a major emergency or multiple major emergencies. There is no way in hell that I would have reason to believe that HRC would be mired in endless twitter wars with heads of state, threatening real wars with nuclear nations, and holding health care hostage from Americans. We are in a situation where some entertainer named Pit Bull is arguably doing more to help Puerto Rico than our own federal government, because the folks who are supposed to be in charge are doing nothing more than playing golf.
Puerto Rico’s debt problems are separate and actually would require a separate diary. One quick thing: Puerto Rico did not go bankrupt while Obama was in office. Our laws specifically forbid Puerto Rico to declare bankruptcy. There is a debt restructuring bill that got passed last year that allows the island to declare quasi-bankruptcy, and Puerto Rico is now seeking to restructure its debts based on the provisions of that legislation. The island has been struggling for some time. Many of its problems can be traced back to the mid-1990s through around 2006 when the GOP controlled Congress and during the latter portion of that era, the White House. At that time, a number of tax credits that Puerto Rico relied upon were taken away. Its economy began to contract and has been contracting ever since. That’s a whole other can of worms, and your bloviating is not going to do Puerto Ricans a bit of good.
But yeah – I get your post – Strongman Trump destroys the US which is somehow better than having a stable leader in place who could actually do some good for real living breathing human beings. Some sort of utopia emerges in the aftermath. Or dystopia. Or something. Who cares. But no doubt you’ll still find gigs to play for whatever pasty rich folks can still afford to hear antiquated jazz. So you’ll be okay. Bully for you.
You write:
I got yer “pasty white folks,” right here!!! You racist, classist, ignorant, middle class piece of emptiness.
This is what I do, and Puerto Rico will outlive the weak, American so-called progressive left by decades. So will the other minority communities and countries
Why?
How?
Soul.
It is eternal.
Crass hustle is not.
AG
I’ll repeat with regard to Puerto Rico post-hurricane Maria. There is an immediate crisis that requires immediate action. There are living breathing human beings suffering. The White House occupant is asleep at the golf cart. The men with the power to put motions for aid money to a vote in Congress are clearly uninterested. And people continue to suffer. And die. That is the difference between having someone competent in the White House, surrounded by competent people, and not. A Category 4 hurricane is by definition a catastrophic event. Good leadership can at least prevent making an awful situation worse. Bad leadership exacerbates a catastrophic situation. Right now we have bad leadership and people suffer and die. That is the reality. There is no other way to spin it.
The U.S. has had “bad leadership” at least since the assassination years if not before. Bipartisan bad leadership. The only difference as far as you are concerned is that you kneejerk “agree” with…identify with, to be precise…the Democratic style of bad leadership and do not identify with the Republican brand.
They are both equally bad.
AG
The immediate problem in Puerto Rico – don’t lose focus. This looping back around to your usual “both equally bad” schtick does not address the issue. What we do have is a catastrophic situation in Puerto Rico. The emergency response led by the Cheeto Combover in the White House (or more likely out on the golf course) has bungled the response in a way that would make GWB look like a genius. Real living breathing human beings are suffering in the interim. They don’t give a fuck right now about the crap you spew out on a regular basis about both-siderism, neocentrism, deep state conspiracies, ad nauseum. They care about surviving. Period. Anyone with even the bare minimum of a conscience cares about their survival. Period. Food, water, electricity, medicines. Where’s the US response? Crickets. Maybe the occasional lame response. The emergency response will probably eventually get there, too little and too late. And people will suffer for longer than they might have with competent people running the show. The reality of the situation is, to repeat, catastrophic. That is not fake news. We would have likely seen a better response with a HRC administration. We’ll never know for sure, but it’s a safe bet when we’re comparing Trump to someone who actually knows how government works and actually appoints people who know how government works. Both sides equally bad? Laughable.
You write:
Well…that’s true enough.
We would have “seen” more favorable media coverage if HRC was in power. On the ground? I don’t know. I’m not here. I believe nothing said about Trump by the anti-Trump media. Puerto Rico is of curse in dire straits., It would be in dire straits under HRC as well. That’s what happens when a generally neglected colony…because that’s what PR really is, a U.S. colony…is hit by a disaster. It actually went broke under Obama.
Further…”…someone who actually knows how government works and actually appoints people who know how government works???!!!”
I’ll give you that.
She knows how it works alright, and so would have her appointees.
For them!!!
It’s all hype and a mile deep, DD. Sorry. I trust none of them anymore. It’s all false news now. The only differences in coverage lie in the self-interest of those who control the media.
WTFU.
AG
Puerto Rico did not ask to restructure its debt until March of this year (due to some quirks in our laws that go back several decades, Puerto Rico cannot actually declare bankruptcy). So, to your continued inane point, Puerto Rico did not go bankrupt under Obama. There is no scenario under which that case could be made by a sane person. So yet again you make a factually incorrect claim that is easily refutable. Let it go.
The situation Puerto Rico is in financially is one that unfolded over a long period of time. Long before Obama came along. Long before Obama was even thinking of running for elected office. Puerto Rico deserves far better than its current situation. Maintenance as a colony seems unworkable, as the now two decade economic recession on the island would suggest. If a majority of Puerto Ricans wanted independence, I’d be okay with that. I’d also be okay if a majority wanted statehood – although given the composition of Congress these days, I’d wonder if that effort would stand much of a chance. The GOP are a bit too much of the “blood and soil” variety for my comfort, and getting worse by the moment.
In the meantime, the Dotard dithers and Puerto Rico drowns. The outrage should be reserved for said Dotard and his toadies. At least most of the folks here in the pond seem to get it. If only you did too. Bloviate away.
This is SO ludicrous. Yes, indeed equally bad. I mean, you can say the Dems aren’t left enough. That they are too wedded to this or that policy. That they are corrupt, even. But the same? Please.
I mean every day you can read about how Democrats as a party today are ignoring climate change, how they fight against all forms of birth control, how they were pushing for stricter forms of voter id, how they are fighting against equal rights for LBGTQ, how they were encouraging cops to shoot up minorities, trashing public schools, looking for excuses to increase asset forfeiture, pushing for oil exploration in national parks, making it harder for people to get affordable health care, imposing religious tests, etc etc.
I mean, good God, the Dems aren’t saints and have their fair share of evil, stupid, venal, or well-intentioned but ultimately misguided, policies in their history and today, but to say the parties are the same is so incredibly stupid that it really ought to be grounds for banning, as it demonstrates that the poster simply has nothing useful to add to the discussion, as their own words have pointed out their incredible, flaming ignorance.
Another believer in the media hype!!!
Have you ever spent any quality time in the minority ghettos of the U.S., jammerjim? I have. I have worked and lived in and around them my entire adult life. If the Dems are so…leftish…why aren’t the problems of these ghettos addressed effectively when they are in office? I was there under Bill Clinton and there under Barack Obama, and besides a lot of posturing, nothing really changed. The schools are still putrid; the wages are still low and…aside from gentrification which pushes workers out ever further from proximity to their jobs (if they are lucky enough to have one)…nothing has really gotten any better.
The urban riots over racist cop brutality? They’re not just some figment of the residents’ imaginations. The lack of turnout for Clinton last year in minority areas? They weren’t born stupid. It took them about 8 years to thoroughly see through Obama due to their understandably wishful thinking about what he was going to do, but they didn’t make the same mistake again w/HRC.
If the Dems are so “leftish,” why do they continue to kowtow to Wall Street?
if they are so “leftish,” why did they not let Bernie Sanders have a fair shot during the primaries?
If they are so “leftish,” why did Barack Obama countenance the real deplorable acts of the NSA/CIA in mass surveillance? That serial liar james Clapper stood in front of the Senate pf the United States and baldly lied his ass off about mass surveillance. Did Obama punish him? Hell no!!! Did the Dems in the Senate call him out? There must be some of them with the common sense to know he was lying. Not a word from them, then or now.
I got yer Democratic Party. Right here!!!
On the smiling hustle with their colleagues in the Republican Party.
Wake the fuck up.
You been had!!!
AG
You didn’t actually address a single one of my points. Not one. Go hang out with Alex Jones.
Sadly, that’s pretty much all one can expect from AG. If only he could type in 140 characters or less, he could have a legendary twitter account. He’d have the best words. Huge words. Like dat!
So ag repeats it — thoroughly discrediting himself in the process — literally ad nauseum.
I would not support banning on these grounds, but no, ag “simply has nothing useful to add to the discussion”. No indeed.
The one feature to the old usenet newsgroups that is missing on blogs is the killfile. AG would have wound up in there for me a long, long time ago. Of course killfiles don’t stop epic flamewars, but at least they offer an exit if folks want to cool off, rather than be inflamed by trolls. In the meantime, I wonder what would happen if AG were to start his own community blog or simply serve as a mod for a blog or discussion group (on FB or elsewhere), and then have to deal with commenters like himself. I say that as someone who’s done some time as a mod (w/ a couple very tiny communities between 2006 and 2008). It is truly a thankless task, as is hosting a blog. I will add that Booman has much more patience than me.
everything is questionable, including your pist and this comment. But hell no, we’re not nihilists.
sorry, your POST…
There’s a zinger in there somewhere about “pissed” but damned if I can formulate it.
Meanwhile,this POS *president is now attacking the mayor of San Juan and the people of that island for not groveling with sufficient gratitude toward him.
From the arduous surroundings of his New Jersey golf course.
This is as concise as I’ve found
He ruins everything. We are all worse people from being around his poisonous personality.
It’s going to take years for us to recover.
.
That is a magnificent rant.
Please note the mayor has yet to refer to the donald as President Trump. She addressed him yesterday as Mr. Trump and reduced her reply to his am tweet to just Trump.
There are quite a few of us who will never immediately precede Trump with the word President. I’m definitely with the Mayor on that front. Hell, I hope she keeps speaking up for the people of her city. Someone sure needs to. It won’t be the Cheeto Combover, whose ass is glued to a golf cart.
As there is a degree of truth in this one (unlike the Birther nonsense that Trump exploited), exaggerating it to the hilt isn’t inappropriate.
Only the rough accounting details have been reported and that’s insufficient to conclude, as WaPo did, that Trump didn’t make the Coco Beach/Trump Inc. Golf Club worse.
The MoU with that proposed hotel in Moscow (which I did read) offered a window into how TrumpInc structures its deals when a facility will carry the Trump logo and doesn’t include a TrumpInc investment in it. Financially there are three parts: 1) upfront fee 2) licensing fee 3) management fee. #1 is non-refundable and a specific dollar amount. #2 is a percentage of revenues. #3 is a formula based on profits. As there were no profits at Coco Beach, #3 is inoperative. That leaves the reported $600,000 that Trump pocketed and the TrumpInc claim for just under a million dollars. My guess if that the $600,000 was the upfront fee (#1) and the unpaid million dollars is the licensing fee (#2).
The TrumpInc management appears to consist of monitoring the facility for compliance with the predefined standards to carry the Trump logo and payment of #2 and #3. Those standards probably vary little in the actual agreements from one facility to another which suggests that it’s assumed that Trump has a formula for success. It didn’t work for Coco Beach Trump. Operationally, what can’t be determined is the financial impact of TrumpInc’s involvement from 2008-12. It’s known that the annual losses increased by a million dollars after 2007, but unknown what the annual losses would have been had TrumpInc not been involved.
However, that TrumpInc agreement (the sure-fire key to success, ha-ha) gave the owners some breathing room. Unknown is if any private lenders/creditors hung in there because of it. That would have included Puerto Rico’s Industrial, Tourist, Educational, Medical and Environmental Control (AFICA) unless the owners (out of their own pockets and/or from additional private borrowings) managed to cough up some bond payments from 2008 through 2010 to avoid a default.* That part of the story hasn’t been explored by reporters. Known is that the Trump agreement facilitated a 2011 rollover of the 2000 and 2004 AFICA bonds. That cost AFICA at least $8 million, the difference between the bankruptcy amount due of $33 million and the $25 million 2011 bond issuance.
*The outstanding balance due from Coco Beach Golf on the 2000 and 2004 bonds as of 2008 is another bit of missing information.
Throwing new good money after bad is almost always a good way to increase the bad.
Perhaps I’m too suspicious, but Trump doubling down on trashing Puerto Rico because of its debts, ostensibly as an excuse for not extending adequate aid to PR in the midst of a devastating natural disaster, is bizarre. Something about PR has gotten under his skin. Does he have something to hide? Or is it revenge (a Trump MO) for not getting the expected bucks and bragging rights from his PR golf club deal? Either way, getting under Trump’s skin puts him in a defensive position and the opposition would be smart not to let up on the pressure. Particularly since this one doesn’t potentially involve another actual shooting war.
His fans hate brown people. They hate the Spanish language. What more do you neef to know?
Going with that “deplorable” campaign strategy again and hoping for a better outcome are ya?
Need more Tiffany Whittier’s. She has changed at least one more really hard heart than you have.
WARNING!!! The Real Donald Trump(tm)was kidnapped while in Moscow in 2015, and a Russian plant substituted by Putin. The Fake News Media won’t tell you about it, but the Enquirer Staff is on it! Prove that it’s not true! There! You can’t, because Eric Holder is secretly blackmailing you to spread liberal lies Martin!
It’s just as true as that true, true story the NRA spread on the internets a couple of years ago where Obama was buying up all the ammo, so that all the militia patriots wouldn’t have any ahead of the planned coup where they were planning to take away all the guns from law abiding gun owners! And the proof of this was that there was a huge shortage of ammo in local stores, due, they said, to all the militia patriots buying up ammo, just in case! But, that was clearly a lie! It was Obama all right! Only the Real Merkin Patriots thwarted him by stockpiling all the ammo! Heroes!
False equivalence. The rightwing buys into complete fabrications promulgated by other rightwingers. Trump’s Moscow golden shower would be the anti-Trump equivalent to the examples you’ve cited.
Coco Beach/Trump Golf has a) some truth to it and b) Trump and the rightwingers are stuck with being in a defensive position on it.
Trump’s Moscow golden shower would be the anti-Trump equivalent to the examples you’ve cited.
Does anyone remember Robin Leach’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? As you can imagine, he profiled Trump at some point. The golden shower thing sounds dubious because, at least back then, Trump was a big time germophobe. He hated shaking hands with people and always used to go to lunch at the same NY restaurant and have the same $50 hamburger. Seriously. But then that was back in the 1980’s, or possibly early 90’s. Sadly, it appears the Trump episode isn’t on YouTube anywhere. I tried to search for it and I ended up with the one for Adnan Khashoggi instead. Remember that crook?
I remember Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous as a TV thing, and as with most such TV things, I never viewed a second of it but didn’t hesitate to mock it and those that wasted their time watching such crap.
The reason why I put the birther and golden shower matters together is that both fail a rudimentary logic test. Ludicrous that a nineteen year old American woman would go to Kenya for the birth of her first child. Even if the woman and prospective father had the financial means to do so (which they didn’t have). Golden showers is too far down the list of kinky fetishes for it to be plausible for a man that otherwise has only exhibited conventional sexism. Unlike say diaper Vitter, he hasn’t even used a religious moral cloak to hide a yuck propensity. His claim to be a germaphobe may have been useful to refute his more ordinary disgusting behaviors such as “he grabbed me and stuck his tongue down my throat” accusation.
ISTR the claim wasn’t that he had them pee on him. It was that he hired the hookers to pee on the bed — specifically to soil the mattress.
Was coming here to post just this.
Okay — reveals how little I can stomach reading salacious and disgusting allegations. And I really don’t like thinking about the private, adult, consensual sex lives of anyone and resent those that foist this on others.
So, the allegation is that Trump hired prostitutes to pee on each other in the bed in the presidential suite of the Moscow Ritz-Carlton as he watched. Getting a voyeuristic thrill. Maybe he does like watching that sort of thing. But with live witnesses that have no undying loyalty to him?
Trump is weird but he’s also a cheapskate. How much would high-class prostitutes charge to do something like this? (Would his germaphobia allow him to hire low class prostitutes?) And what about the freaking bed? Did the Ritz-Carlton bill him for damages or merely write off replacing the bed? All those witnesses and not one mentioned seeing the bed being carted off to the dump after Trump was there. How long before he checked out was this private performed? Trump residing in a stinky suite for more than a few minutes doesn’t pass a smell test. Finally, how the hell would Trump have known that it was even the bed Obama had slept in? (Obama was in Moscow July 6-8, 2009 and Trump wasn’t there until November 2013.) Where did Trump sleep before and after it was soiled?
There’s a dossier, you should read it.
It includes more than one source.
One source, a former top FSB officer (Source B), claims that the FSB deliberately compromised Trump by arranging/satisfying his perversions and recording the resulting debauchery.
At least one example was confirmed (unwittingly) by Source D, who organized and managed Trump’s recent trips to Moscow. Source D claimed to be present (perhaps in the room, but at least in the same hotel) when Trump deliberately asked for the same presidential suite the Obamas had used, and hired prostitutes to defile their bed for him.
It was confirmed by Source E, who said that he/she was aware of it at the time or right after it happened, and so were several members of the staff who discussed it subsequently.
Source E introduced a “company” Russian ethnic operative to Source F, a member of the hotel staff, who corroborated the pee story.
In other words, Source D spoke about the pee story in an offhand and unguarded way to someone he trusted. That information was taken to Source E who confirmed it and introduced Source F who also confirmed it.
Source B didn’t corroborate the specific pee story. It’s not clear they were even asked about it. But they corroborated that Russian intelligence had deliberately enticed or enable Trump to commit embarrassing sexual acts that they could use to blackmail him.
That’s what’s in the dossier. It didn’t come from nowhere. If it were made up in idle or boasting conversation in a New York restaurant (by Source D), it wouldn’t have been confirmable in Moscow by sources E and F, who actually worked there. But it was confirmed.
And it was consistent with other information obtained separately from a former “top” FSB officer.
So, either Steele made the whole thing up, which is inconsistent with his stellar recored as an intelligence officer, or you should consider the possibility that you have no idea what Trump’s capable of doing out of spite.
As long as he/his could remain safe, I have no trouble comprehending that Trump could blow up the world out of spite. (On that he’s not alone.) So, I’m not short on that comprehension thingy.
The story still stinks. The timeline is all wrong — too many years between Obama’s and Trump’s Moscow visits (unlikely that the mattress hadn’t been replaced for four and a half years) and two and a half years between Obama mocking Trump at the WH Correspondent’s dinner and the Moscow pee bed allegation. Neither you nor I know what Trump privately does solely out of spite. We only know that he tweets spiteful words and from that assume that he spews spiteful words privately. However, words and deeds aren’t the same. If they were, we wouldn’t so frequently be shocked to discover cruel acts committed by people that never gave any prior clue through words.
It’s safe to say that Trump is a born wealthy (how wealthy is questionable), sexist, sleazy business operator who is ill-informed, not competent at much of anything other than self-promotion, and has little to no regard for others that aren’t white and wealthy, but he is able to censor himself to manipulate non-wealthy white people. That seems like enough to work with to discredit him. Why bother with a stinky story based on claims by anonymous people put together by a man that lived/worked undercover in Russia for three or fewer years, 1990-1993? A story that if it had leaked to Russian authorities in 2013 could easily have been interpreted as Trump pissing on Russia when he was trying to do more business there?
A sidenote: Trump’s recent trips to Moscow. How does four trips to Moscow from July 1987 to November 2013 get turned into recent trips?
Give up, Marie.
I have.
Booman has drunk the CIA’s “Sources With Alphabet Names” Kool-Aid.
End of story.
AG
P.S. I have it on good authority that “Source X” says the world is going to end tomorrow.
Bye-bye…
yeah, he’s a neocentric bum.
you manage to completely misunderstand both of your topics.
1. birtherism isn’t ridiculous because it is unlikely that his mother traveled to meet the father’s parents and gave birth in Kenya. It’s true that their circumstances at the time make this an unlikely thing to have happened, but the main reason that argument is ridiculous is that he would still be eligible to be president in that case because his mother was a U.S. citizen. For example, George Romney was born in Mexico to U.S. citizens, and he was eligible to be president. Ted Cruz was born Calgary but his mother was a U.S. citizen so he was eligible to be president. John McCain was born in Panama and was eligible both because his parents were citizens and because he was born on a U.S. base. My brother was born in Germany while my father was in the army. He’s eligible to be president.
But supposedly things were different for Barack Obama.
2) Trump did not hire prostitutes to pee on him. That’s not at all what was alleged in the dossier. He supposedly made a deliberate decision to get the exact same room than Barack and Michelle used when they were in Moscow. That’s the key.
And then he hired prostitutes to pee on the bed that the Obamas had slept in as a way of defiling the Obamas.
There’s no necessary sexual gratification to this at all. That wasn’t the point. What was alleged was that this was his twisted way of satisfying a lust for revenge.
It would help your credibility if had even a rudimentary familiarity with facts like these.
Also, anyone with a passing familiarity with human sexuality would ever begin a sentence this way: “Golden showers is too far down the list of kinky fetishes for it to be plausible…”
I guarantee you that ten minutes with an experienced sex worker would disabuse you of the idea that you know what’s plausible about the sex lives of people you know, let alone people that you don’t.
Technically, you’re incorrect. While it’s true that a child born anywhere in the world to U.S. citizen mother is automatically a U.S. citizen at birth in almost all instances, there are specific tests that a mother must meet. In Obama’s case, his mother didn’t meet one of them; so, where he was born was germane.
wrt the ‘natural born citizen’ clause in the Constitution, it’s been raised four times since ’64. Goldwater and McCain got a pass. Romney dropped out before a decision was made on the question; so, it wasn’t a precedent. For better or worse, Ted Cruz’s case (which was after the birther nonsense) had ended the debate on this. (His mother did meet those technical requirements when he was born.)
I’ve already addressed the golden shower issue after being corrected as to the allegation. (I’m sure I wasn’t alone in being misled by the use of the term golden shower for this allegation.)
what in the unholy hell are you talking about?
Stanley Ann Dunham was both on November 29, 1942 in Wichita, Kansas. Not that it matters, but her parents were also born in the United States. All of them were full U.S. citizens in every sense of the word.
The only person in this entire scenario who was not a U.S. citizen is Barack Obama Sr., and that doesn’t matter legally in the slightest regardless of where Obama Jr. was born.
There are no conceivable tests that Stanley Ann could have failed.
She was born in the USA. She lived in the USA for every second of her life prior to her son being born. She was 18 when her son was born, not that it could possibly matter if she were 17 or 12.
She’s actually related to Wild Bill Hickok, for whatever that’s worth. It certainly doesn’t cause her to fail some “test.”
Are you drunk?
Give it up, Booman; some folks just don’t need facts or experience to know it all and condescend to tell everyone else what to think, as illuminated though their own very special lens.
Except in this instance, I’m not ignoring any facts. The primary fact is that Obama was born in HI and therefore, any further considerations are merely hypothetical.
ob·sti·nate
ˈäbstənət/Submit
adjective
stubbornly refusing to change one’s opinion or chosen course of action, despite attempts to persuade one to do so.
synonyms: stubborn, unyielding, inflexible, unbending, intransigent, intractable, obdurate, mulish, bullheaded, stubborn as a mule, pigheaded, self-willed, strong-willed, headstrong, willful, contrary, perverse, recalcitrant, refractory, uncooperative, unmanageable, stiff-necked, rigid, uncompromising, implacable, unrelenting, immovable, unshakable;
.
Read through the specific requirements for the U.S. citizen mother. Like you, I was under the impression that Obama’s mother’s status when he was born closed the case on his citizenship regardless of where he was born, but that was merely a hypothetical or what if point because there was solid evidence that he had been born in HI and zero evidence of any alternative birth place.
I only delved into this when the question was raised about Cruz. His mother met all the requirements and not registering the birth with the U.S. consulate doesn’t change the status of the child. Dunham’s age at the time Obama was born would have made her short on the residency requirement if she had given birth abroad. Not knowing and appreciating that wrinkle made the birthers look even more ignorant and unhinged than they were.
.
The only possible intersection with something resembling a rational thought may be something she vaguely remembers Alan Grayson saying about Ted Cruz’s mother.
In that case, Cruz’s mother was once listed on a Canadian voter roll and may have renounced her American citizenship in order to become eligible to vote in Canada.
That would be a possible complication for Cruz’s eligibility, since his parents were living in Canada when he was born.
But Stanley Ann Obama is not on any Kenyan voter rolls.
There are no “specific requirements for the U.S. citizen mother.”
None.
Nada.
Zero.
You are fully juiced at 100% wrong.
What else is new here?
You see? I told you — Both sides do it!
I’m not sure where Booman is going with this post, but I’ll treat the question asked seriously.
I know it’s wrong and we are supposed to not sink, but sometimes I am tempted, strongly tempted, to not care. I mean, it’s not like Trump supporters (even the ones sort of on board, but not totally uncaring) are too worried about a truth that doesn’t support their narrative anyway, and Trump haters will accept the lie as a necessary casualty of war. The middle? The middle bought a pack of pretty lies and ignored some hard truths to get us here. If we can get them on board with a simple lie over a complex truth, maybe we should. Perhaps there is too much at stake to be sticklers.
Sometimes we accept a result, even if we know the method was not really correct, because we need that result.
And that’s dangerous. I know it. Lincoln played fast and loose with the law to save the Union. After the war ended, we manged to go back to normal. Columbia took down Paul Escobar only by being as criminal as he was. Did that work out okay? I dunno. We allied with Stalin to stop Hitler. That was probably worth the price, but the price was high.
I just think of this scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-YyL7X4CWw
Part of it: “I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But the most damning thing of all… I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again, I would. Garak was right about one thing – a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant.”
The thing is, you need to be willing to go there AND go to prison after for the crime.
Yes, tempting.
Tempting to become them to defeat them.
But then you are them, so you haven’t defeated them.
Nothing gained. Primary moral advantage lost. Worse, not lost by having it taken from you. Lost by voluntarily handing it over.
See Mike in Ohio’s comment for example of an effective alternative: ridicule.
No, our primary moral advantage is not that we fact-check ourselves, but that we want to make lives better and longer for most people, while the Republicans want to make all lives nastier and shorter apart from the 1%.
The Allies used propaganda extensively in WWII. Did that make them as bad as the Axis?
end-justifies-the-means defense for their campaigns relying on self-imposed ignorance, Reality-Denial, actual Fake News, voter suppression, the scorched-earth politics of character assassination grounded in distortions and outright lying, and welcoming foreign (e.g., Russian) assistance in the last.
Go there if you choose. I’ll not be there alongside you. And I’ll continue to counsel my political fellow-travelers to flee that temptation, as succumbing to it can lead to only Pyrrhic “victory”.
Also too, the WWII propaganda analogy is inapt on at least two bases: 1) most importantly, internal U.S. politics are not all-out, violent armed conflict against a global, existential threat — at least not yet(!), though GOPers’ sin is to treat them as such; and 2) “propaganda” is not automatically false (though it may be and often is, likely including some of the U.S.’s own during WWII).
Is it true that the military paid the NFL to have the players come out for the national anthem to promote the armed services? I read that somewhere? Did it used to be that players stayed in the locker until after all that ceremonial stuff? Or is that fake news?
Certainly true that the military paid for putting on patriotic militaristic displays, also that the players formerly did not come out before the anthem.
“The players” are well-paid slaves, janicket, part of a bread and circuses distraction hype. They are gladiators in a New Rome, nothing more and nothing less. Anyone who seriously watches grown men taking repeated blows to the head…blows that have been publicly proven to result in physical, mental and emotional trauma on the level of of that poor, murdering fool Aaron Hernandez…is beyond help.
“The military” doesn’t pay for those displays, the controllers do.
Why?
Because bread and circuses works, that’s why.
Until of course it doesn’t…which is where we are headed now.
Step by step…
Step by step…
AG
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
This is great. San Juan Mayor hits back at Trump
Mayor Cruz demonstrates how to punch back hard and with class and humor. A style that SC Justice Sonia Sotomayor often exhibits and makes her so impressive.