#trump business is a bad bet

[mudwerks]

(via Trump Media Shares Plummet To Record-Low After Debate)

Shares for Trump Media on Wednesday dropped more than 15%, falling to what would be a new record low for the stock, after Vice President Kamala Harris became the betting favorite to win the election after a debate with former President Donald Trump, the majority stakeholder in the Truth Social parent.

79%. That’s how much the value of Trump Media shares has decreased since hitting a record-high of $79.38 on March 25.

DJT stock is currently at $16.62

I honestly feel sorry for people that believe he is a good businessman. Look at his business record and judge for yourself. If you’re going by his unfounded claims you are putting yourself in financial jeopardy.

People have lost a ton of money betting on trump.

Never bet your life savings on a “sure thing”. 

[geritsel]

Robert De Niro Talks trump

Robert de Niro turns 81 this year. He still is everything Donald Trump is not; talented, intelligent, compassionate and – as far as I know – a man of a man of impeccable integrity.

Here’s Robert De Niro’s full statement about how Donald Trump should NEVER be president again:

“I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men. I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty.

Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly.

I see an evil one.

Over the years, I’ve met gangsters here and there. This guy tries to be one, but he can’t quite pull it off. There’s such a thing as “honor among thieves.” Yes, even criminals usually have a sense of right and wrong.

Whether they do the right thing or not is a different story — but — they have a moral code, however warped.

Donald Trump does not. He’s a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics. No sense of right or wrong. No regard for anyone but himself — not the people he was supposed to lead and protect, not the people he does business with, not the people who follow him, blindly and loyally, not even the people who consider themselves his “friends.” He has contempt for all of them.

We New Yorkers got to know him over the years that he poisoned the atmosphere and littered our city with monuments to his ego. We knew first hand that this was someone who should never be considered for leadership. We tried to warn the world in 2016.

The repercussions of his turbulent presidency divided America and rattled New York City beyond imagination. Remember how we were jolted by crisis in early 2020, as a virus swept the world.

We lived with Donald Trump’s bombastic behavior every day on the national stage, and we suffered as we saw our neighbors piling up in body bags.

The man who was supposed to protect this country put it in peril, because of his recklessness and impulsiveness. It was like an abusive father ruling the family by fear and violent behavior. That was the consequence of New York’s warning getting ignored. Next time, we know it will be worse.

Make no mistake: the twice-impeached, 4-time indicted Donald Trump is still a fool. But we can’t let our fellow Americans write him off like one. Evil thrives in the shadow of dismissive mockery, which is why we must take the danger of Donald Trump very seriously.

So today we issue another warning. From this place where Abraham Lincoln spoke — right here in the beating heart of New York — to the rest of America: This is our last chance.

Democracy won’t survive the return of a wannabe dictator. And it won’t overcome evil if we are divided.

So what do we do about it? I know I’m preaching to the choir here. What we’re doing today is valuable, but we have to take today into tomorrow – take it outside these walls. We have to reach out to the half of our country who have ignored the hazards of Trump and, for whatever reason, support elevating him back into the White House.

They’re not stupid, and we must not condemn them for making a stupid choice. Our future doesn’t just depend on us. It depends on them.

Let’s reach out to Trump’s followers with respect. Let’s not talk about “democracy.” “Democracy” may be our holy grail, but to others it is just a word, a concept, and in their embrace of Trump, they’ve already turned their backs on it.

Let’s talk about right and wrong. Let’s talk about humanity.

Let’s talk about kindness. Security for our world.

Safety for our families.

Decency.

Let’s welcome them back.

We won’t get them all, but we can get enough to end the nightmare of Trump, and fulfill the mission of this “Stop Trump Summit.”

For many Robert de Niro may be far too rich and far too Hollywood, but i consider this as straight from the heart. I love this man.

BTW... I have high regards for followers on Tumblr, some I consider as friends without ever having met them, but I completely understand those who get fed up with my political in betweens. I wish you all the best!

Regards,

Geritsel (Let Donald Trump never ever become president again.)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Biden wants to ban ripoff “financial advisors”

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library on Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

Once, American workers had "defined benefits pensions," where their employers promised to pay them a certain amount every year from their retirement to their death. Jimmy Carter swapped that out for 401(k)s, "market" pensions where you have to guess which stocks will be valuable or starve in your old age:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses

The initial 401(k) rollout had all kinds of pot-sweeteners that made them seem like a good deal, like heavy employer matching that doubled or even tripled the value of every dollar you put into the market for your retirement. But over the years, as Reaganomics took hold and workers' power ebbed away, all these goodies were clawed back. In the end, the market-based pension makes you the sucker at the poker table, flushing your savings into a rigged casino that is firmly tilted in favor of finance barons and other eminently guillotineable plutocrats.

Neoliberalism is many things, but most of all it is a cult of individualism. The fact that three generations of workers are nows facing down retirement without pensions that will provide them with secure housing and food – let alone money to see the odd movie, buy birthday gifts for their grandkids, or enjoy a meal out now and then – is framed as millions of individual failures, not a systemic one.

In other words, if you are facing food insecurity and homelessness after a lifetime of hard work, it's because you saved wrong. Perhaps you didn't save enough (through a 40-year run of wage stagnation and skyrocketing housing, health and education costs). Or perhaps you saved wrong, making the wrong bets on the stock market. If you can't afford to run your air conditioner during a heat dome, that's on you: you should have been better at stocks.

Apologists for this system will say that you don't have to be good at stocks – you just have to pay an Independent Financial Advisor to pick the stocks for you and you'll be fine. But IFAs don't work for free! What if you can't afford one?

Enter "predatory inclusion" – the practice of offering scammy, overpriced and substandard products to poor people and declaring it to be a good deed, because otherwise, those poor people would have to do without. The crypto bubble relied heavily on this: think of Spike Lee and others shilling for pump-and-dump scams as a way of "building Black wealth":

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/business/media/cryptocurrency-seeks-the-spotlight-with-spike-lees-help.html

More recently, Intuit and other scammy tax-prep services have argued against the IRS's plan to offer free tax preparation as bad for Black and brown people, because it will deny them the chance to be deceived and ripped off with TurboTax:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

Back in 2018, Trump won the predatory inclusion Olympics, when his Department of Labor let the Fifth Circuit abolish the "Fiduciary Rule" for Independent Financial Advisors:

https://www.investopedia.com/updates/dol-fiduciary-rule/

What was the Fiduciary Rule? It said that your IFN had to put your interests ahead of their own. Like, if there were two different funds you could bet on, and one would pay your IFN a big commission, while the other would be a better bet for you, the IFN couldn't put your retirement savings into the fund that offered them a bribe.

When Trump killed the Fiduciary Rule, he proclaimed it a victory for poor people, especially Black and brown people. After all, if IFNs weren't allowed to accept bribes for giving you bad financial advice, then they would have to make up the difference by charging you for good advice. If you couldn't afford that advice, well, you'd have to make bad retirement investments on your own, without the benefit of their sleazy self-dealing.

The Biden Administration wants to change that. Biden's Acting Labor Secretary is Julie Su, and she's very good at her job. Last spring, she forced west coast dockworkers' bosses to cough up the contract they'd stalled on for a year, with 8-10% raises for every worker, owed retroactively:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

Su has proposed a way to reinstate the Fiduciary Rule, as part of the Biden Administration's war on junk fees, estimating that this will increase retirees' net savings by 20%:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-11-07-julie-su-labor-retirement-savers/

The new rule will force advisors who cheat their clients to pay restitution, and will require them to deliver all their advice in writing so that this cheating can be detected and punished.

The industry is furious, of course. They claim that "The Market (TM)" will solve this: if you get bad retirement savings advice and end up homeless and starving, then you will choose a different advisor in your next life, after you are reincarnated (I guess?).

And of course, they're also claiming that forcing IFNs to stop cheating their clients will deny poor people access to expert (bad) advice. As the Financial Services Institute's Dale Brown says, this will have a "negative impact on Main Street Americans’ access to financial advice":

https://www.fa-mag.com/news/legal-challenge-predicted-for-new-dol-fiduciary-proposal-75257.html

Here's that rule – read it for yourself, then submit a comment expressing your views on it. The government wants to hear from you, and administrative law requires them to act on the comments they receive:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/11/03/2023-23782/proposed-amendment-to-prohibited-transaction-exemptions-75-1-77-4-80-83-83-1-and-86-128

Su is part of a wave of progressive, technically skilled regulators in the Biden administration that resulted from a horse-trading exercise called the Unity Task Force, which divvied up access to top appointments among the progressive wing and the finance wing of the Democratic Party. The progressive appointments are nothing short of incredible – the most competent and principled agency leaders America has seen in half a century:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

But then there's the finance wing's appointments, like Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who ruled against Lina Khan's attempt to block the rotten Microsoft/Activision merger (don't worry, Khan's appealing):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

Perhaps the worst, though, is Biden's Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, a private equity ghoul who did a stint for the notorious wreckers Bain Capital before founding her own firm. Raimondo has stuffed her department full of Goldman Sachs alums, and has sidelined labor and civil society groups as she sets out to administer everything from the CHIPS Act to regulating ChatGPT.

As Henry Burke writes for the Revolving Door Project and The American Prospect, Raimondo's history as a corporate raider, her deference to the finance sector, and she and her husband's conflicts of interest from their massive stakes in companies she's regulating all serve to undermine Biden's agenda:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-11-08-commerce-secretary-gina-raimondo-undercutting-bidenomics/

When the administration inevitably complains that its popular economic programs aren’t breaking through the media coverage, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

The Unity Task Force gave us generationally important policymakers, but ultimately, it's a classic "pizzaburger." If half your family wants pizza, and the other half wants burgers, and you serve them something halfway in between that makes none of them happy, you haven't made a wise compromise – you've just made an inedible mess:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/17/pizzaburgers/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/08/fiduciaries/#but-muh-freedumbs

[tomorrowusa]

« Donald Trump is someone you should think carefully about hitching your financial fortunes to. The guy is a gifted carnival barker, no doubt. But when it comes to serious business, he is a bad bet. Many of his ventures, from vodka and steaks to casinos and “university” degrees, have flopped like dying fish. Declaring corporate bankruptcy seems to be one of his favorite hobbies. And even when he wriggles away from failure largely unscathed, the other parties involved aren’t always so fortunate. Where money is involved, anyone still foolish enough to crawl into bed with him should be prepared for the experience to end in tears.

[ ... ]

Republicans have fallen in line behind a guy who has zero loyalty to the party, who cares only how it can serve him and who would rather strip it for parts than invest a nickel in its general well-being. »

— Michelle Cottle at the New York Times.

Republicans had the chance to get rid of Donald Trump at the second impeachment in early 2021. But they showed the same sort of wisdom as those Russian troops who dug trenches and camped out on the grounds of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor early in Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Now the GOP is saturated with debilitating Trump radiation.

Republicans know better but are too cowardly to do anything about their situation. They care too much about their short term personal political careers to be concerned about the long term prospects for the US.

A sweeping GOP defeat this year would push them into a state of recriminatory chaos and possibly lead to them going the way of the Whigs,

[uboat53]

I'm calling it now, Donald Trump had a stroke. Hear me out.

So, first of all, Trump did an interview with Elon Musk yesterday on Twitter (or "X", I suppose) where he sounded off. I hadn't heard it until today so I was prepared for it not to be as bad as the chatter, but it was definitely bad. Whenever he got excited it seemed like his mouth filled up with saliva to the point where he sounded like Sylvester the Cat; I half expected to hear him say "thuffering thucotash!" after listening to him for only 30 seconds.

Of course his campaign is trying to blame it on the sound equipment and, while he does sound a trifle muffled, I know a few people who deal with sound equipment (benefits of marrying a music teacher) and none of them think this is something that the equipment could have caused.

So why do I think it's a stroke? Let me explain with a story.

You see, in 2016, I had a discussion with a friend where I argued that we should assume Trump is in debt for more than the value of his assets. You see, at that point he was refusing to release tax returns and financial records to prove that he was actually as rich as he said he was. My point was that, by assuming good things about his finances, he would have no incentive to actually release the documents because anything in them was probably much worse than what we were assuming. By assuming the worst, we provide incentive for him to release them, if only just to prove us wrong.

Now it's eight years later and… boy do we know a lot of bad things about his finances. We know that almost none of his buildings run at a profit and that the only one that does is the one that he doesn't manage (the Vornado partnership). We know that his charity was shut down for being a slush fund that did no actual charitable work, we know that he fraudulently inflates and deflates the values of his properties depending on whether he's talking to a lender or a tax collector, and we know that he falsified his business records to hide illegal payments to aid his political career.

In other words, if we'd assumed the worst in 2016, we'd have been much closer to being correct than if we'd even made a neutral assumption!

So that's why I think Trump had a stroke. It would explain why he suddenly developed a speech impediment (unlike Biden's stutter, this wasn't there four years ago) and why he's been holed up in Mar a Lago for the last month.

If he didn't have a stroke, then let's hear the real explanation for these things. I'm betting I'm much closer to being correct than the people who would brush it off as nothing.

[lol-jackles]

So FBBC is downsizing their brewer... (the one they hired after the last one left who hasn't even been there for a year I don't believe):

https://www.instagram.com/p/C1KugBlOkOA/

costhebrewer: Final grain out. I was just getting the hang of this rig. What a bummer. Oh well… on to the next adventure. #whoneedsabrewhouse #whoneedsabrewer

And when someone commented asking "Wait … what? I have really loved your creations. What I miss?" He responded with:

costhebrewer: downsizing staff and stopping in house brewing. Not sure where things go from here for the business.

So now Family Business BEER Company is just... not making beer anymore. What kind of brewery doesn't make their own beer?

My bet is they will be out of business (sold or closed) before 2025. And they are going to make good use of the fine print on those memberships that said they can cancel them at any time. (A jerk AA decided to ask Cos on this post if they are still getting their members only party... read the room dude, your party does not trump someone losing their job during the holidays...)

Also, can we just talk about the fact that they are laying him off AT CHRISTMAS?!!? Seriously read through his responses to people on that post. He even says he'll be done in Jan and is sending out resumes but that its a bad time to have to be doing that.

Also an AA was being an idiot and saying how great it was and he had to be like "I don't know if you don't get what's happening or are just being mean because this isn't a good thing"

Link. Oh noe Danneel's brother doesn't have a job, again! Won't somebody think of the chronically unemployed himbros!

Eh, not surprising. Between my predictions of FBBC sinking in about 5 years (X) (X) (X) and 2023 being the year for contraction for the brewery industry and Jensen's own lack of business acumen, honestly is anyone surprised? Anyone?

With the downsizing, it sounds like the Ackles have moved to contract brewing, meaning they're using another established brewery to make FBBC beer. In this arrangement, the contract brewer can help the "guest company" with packaging and shipping. In other words, in true Ackle's fashion, he's going to let others do the mundane day to day work.

Once I saw the bottling and canning I knew the Ackles wanted to go big with FBBC and never intended to stay a small craft brewery. In order for your craft brewery to succeed you either a very small local, owner-operator with minimal distribution, or you go really big and spend a fortune on marketing in order to compete for shelf space in stores across the state or county.

Anyways, let's have a Throw Back Thursday to FBBC's first promo picture, which completely threw me and wondered what noob thought this was a good idea because Gino and Danneel looked like happily married husband and wife while Jensen looked like the loser relative who sleeps on their couch while waiting for his music to be discovered.

[darkmaga-retard]

By Karen Kwiatkowski

September 17, 2024

The presidential “debate” last week had two outcomes – a thousand new cat memes, and Springfield, Ohio as a new political ground zero. Not exactly what the Harris/Walz front hoped for, hence a second assassination attempt on Trump?  Who will throw the blob a life preserver?

The deep state, neoconservatives of both parties for 40 years, is betting on the least bad choice for continued unconstitutional war profiteering and oligarch-imperialism – and they see a financial clock ticking, if not a nuclear one.  The despicable Cheneys have emerged to endorse this least bad choice, in their deep-state wisdom.  As Tulsi Gabbard explains to Democrats who haven’t figured it out yet, a vote for Harris is a vote for Dick Cheney.  Are there no self-respecting Democrats left in the US?

Is Dick Cheney endorsing continued war, with joy, or simply the joy of continued war? Either way, it is a sign that the blob is internally disintegrating, not solidifying.

With the paired atrocities of the Federal Reserve and explosive government overspending, people cannot get what they want and need with the fiat they have.  Dreams are delayed and abandoned – whether a reliable income that will support three hots and a cot, or raising children, or building a business, or buying a home or seeing that their kids get an education – starting with government kindergarten and its absurd premises. In none of these areas is the federal government “helping” anyone but bureaucrats and the blob.  The American dream is denied because of federal confiscation of nearly 40% of the GDP, every day, much of it spent on reducing your lifespan and liberty, and the lifespan and liberty of billions of people around the world.

The flailing has begun. This election season is running out of time for a successful assassination, or a successful steal in the five or six important counties that matter to “our democracy.”  We have the DC war on any contra with an X or Telegram account saying, filming, or writing anything that counters one of their increasingly rushed and irrational state narratives.

[winderlylandchime]

Here's another interview where Hal talks shit about two cast members when asked a question about why there will never be a QAF movie. One gay, one straight. You do the math lol. Admittedly the interview is from 2008, so lots of time has passed, and it does appear that everyone is cool again given the 2018 EW reunion.

https://www.milehighgayguy.com/2008/09/hal-sparks-speaks_11.html?m=1

Thank you! Oh my god he really gets some digs in, doesn’t he?

Here’s the link

And some excerpts:

No way will there ever be a 'Queer as Folk' movie.

Really? Why not?

Because a couple of the cast members I know for sure wouldn’t do it and I’m certain that the executive producers Ron and Dan wouldn’t want to work with them either.

Bad blood?

Uh, yeah.

Gimme the dirt! What happened?

My feeling always was, an an actor - and especially as one of the straight actors on the show, that, to a degree, it was my job to do my lines the way they were written and mind my fucking business because our executive producers and many of our writers were gay and were creating these scripts and lines to tell their stories. What, I’m gonna come in and say, 'well I don’t think my character would do that'?. It’s like, seriously? Fuck off. Let's just say there was a little bit of, um, pushback with some of the other actors on the show. [Aj note: I bet this is reference to Randy pushing back as a queer man about Justin’s ridiculous storylines.]

The gay ones or the straight ones?

Um, one of each, actually. There ended up being a lot of negativity in kind of just trying to get loving storylines done and it was a tall order.

Thank you so much for this link. I am dyingggggg over it.

Ofc the last paragraph of what would happen to SCOTUS with a McCain/Palin win was scarily predictive of SCOTUS under Trump/Pence and good reminder to all US folks to vote blue in 2024!

[mybookof-you]

I enjoyed the piece above. It makes some good points. I take issue with the unfair accusation that Joe Biden does not care if he loses. It gets my attention, but it does not hold it. So, I remain unconvinced that Joe Biden is not the man deserving of being the President of the United States for another term.

World leaders have agreed that President Biden is capable of conducting official business and that he continues to do so. I see that he is old and, like so many elderly, is slower than he used to be and not as quick on the draw as he once was. My ninety-year-old father in law isn't as quick on his feet as he used to be. He has to think a little longer about what he is saying. What hasn't changed are his convictions, values, and actions: his integrity.

Does being elderly mean President Joe Biden is not capable of hitting his target? I don't think so. He has clear goals and what he stands for is openly shared. When he speaks I never wonder, "What is he thinking really?" I have faith that he means what he says, because his actions line up with his words.

Former President Trump, on the other hand, is a smokescreen. He doesn't have to prepare for debates, because his strategy is to ridicule and punish at whatever cost it takes. His bets are covered. He can make stuff up, lie, and spew ugliness he doesn't even believe in. It doesn't matter, because that isn't what his wealthy supporters are looking for. They are looking for the candidate who will do what they say, what they want, and what they pay for. Donald Trump is available to the highest bidder. So, he can say this. He can say that. His supporters are ultimately okay with him saying or doing whatever else he wants as long as Trump first and foremost does what they demand.

I try not to freak out when I see him hobnobbing with Hungarian authoritarian yet president of a democracy, Victor Orban. Amongst countless other vague and not-so-vague connections and elbow-rubbing activities that get into the news, I am flabbergasted at the conduct of the Trump elected majority of the Supreme Court. That entity used to be Holy in my eyes, but it has been desecrated and shat upon. Gone are the days of the noble and valuable discourse of intelligent truth seekers. Now it is the guns of the elite that make the playbook that judges follow. Money talks, and those in positions of power are getting paid well. I try not to freak out, but it looks really bad for the lower classes which I inhabit.

The one comfort I can hold onto is that empires of the powerful and rich seldom last forever. There will come a day of reckoning, but I would prefer that the looming empire of Trump's supporters does not come to fruition. So, how do you battle a candidate who does not say anything of value? Someone who is clearly not out to represent anyone or anything but his own interests and well-being? You can't. All you can do is be yourself, and President Joe Biden has done just that all these years in our service, and I think he can be himself for another four years. Plus, we have a smart and strong vice-presidential candidate in the wings should President Biden be incapacitated in any way. And, that, dear voters, is what has extremist Republicans shitting their pants. They will do whatever they can to take her down, because they know she is bad news for them. Those of us wanting policies and agendas to continue in the direction they have been under the leadership of our current president, Joe Biden, need to stand their ground.

[militantinremission]

Ok, Donald Trump's Indicted... Now What?

So Mainstream Media & their Democratic Shills R celebrating the 37 Count Indictment against Donald Trump- R they being premature? What exactly R the odds of Donald Trump getting convicted of a Felony Act, let alone dozens? Government & Mainstream Media have been busy keeping The Masses 'Emotional' over the last 20Yrs; all the while, giving up Our Freedom as Citizens for empty promises of Security. This fearfulness has led to an American Society where there are more incidents of Mass Shootings & Mass Killings, than Days of The Year.

This fearfulness has also been weaponized to cause the equivalent of Human Stampedes over Non- Issues, like The Debt Ceiling & Donald Trump. America was NEVER going to default on Its debts; the unnecessary game of Chicken was a waste of Time. The Issue of Donald Trump is an ongoing Saga. Democrats have used Trump to scare their voters to The Polls, but Dems haven't offered a viable alternative. Joe Biden has created hundreds of thousands of (Part Time) Jobs that still don't pay The Bills. His Administration has fostered a steady rise in The Cost Of Living, but Mainstream Media's attention is focused on Donald Trump.

For The Record, I don't see Donald Trump getting convicted. He may finagle a continuance that allows him to campaign throughout the 2024 Election Cycle, but I don't know if he will need to go that far. People are so quick to put Trump in Leg Irons, that they forget the precedent ANY CONVICTION of Donald Trump will set. If American Courts see fit to convict a former President, what will stop The World Court from going after American Politicians, Diplomats, & their Aides for an assortment of War Crimes? Afrikan Governments are expressing frustration over watching their Leaders Tried, Convicted, & Imprisoned, while European & American Leaders commit atrocities, yet remain free.

Lindsey Graham's tone towards George Stephanopoulos on 'This Week' may have been a Tell of sorts. Despite obvious bad behavior by Donald Trump, Republicans appear to be Circling The Wagons around him. Chris Christie, John Bolton, & Bill Bar are getting their 'shots' in, but they also sound like they're hedging their Bet. Does anyone believe that Trump could serve Decades in Prison? In a Case tried by a Judge that he appointed? I feel like saying 'The Fix is In', is an overstatement... I have more concern for his former White House Valet & current Personal Assistant, Walt Nauta.

Mr. Nauta is reportedly seen On Camera moving boxes to Donald Trump's Residence from a storage room, during the same period that The National Archives requested the Presidential material. When asked, Mr Nauta denied moving the boxes. His Indictment may be more worrisome. Donald Trump is keeping Walt Nauta close for now, but Michael Cohen can attest to the length of Donald Trump's Loyalty... Walt would be wise to keep a couple dollars stashed for his own Attorney.

-Just Saying

[thessalian]

Thess vs The Last Choice

In UK political news: Johnson tried to pull a Trump, and failed harder than Trump ever did. Basically he made massive attempts to lie about how much support he was (or more to the point, wasn’t) getting, and meantime begging people to drop out. And then, when it was pretty clear that he wasn’t getting the 100 votes from Tory MPs that he needed to continue in the leadership race, he bowed out, still with the “I won but” lie. Then Penny Mordaunt, the only other actual contender, dropped out too. So we’re going to have Rishi Sunak as PM.

I’d normally be happy to have the PM not be a white person for once. Honestly ... not so much. Mostly, I think, because the only reason he got it was that he was the best choice of a bad lot, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have been chosen (because at this point he was hardly ‘elected’) if there’d been any other even vaguely palatable option. None of the MPs wanted Johnson because they had already worked with Johnson and they saw yet more chaos coming. Particularly since Johnson is a vindictive bitch most of the time. He’s the one who got us into this mess in the first place, filling his cabinet with yes-men and sycophants and firing anyone knowledgeable enough to gainsay him. This left us with this bunch of yahoos squabbling over a role that none of them are fit to fill. If it had gone to a vote, the old white men at the top would probably have voted Mordaunt in, and she’s basically a nonentity.

Why do I have misgivings about Sunak? Well, while he looks good - charming, charismatic, personable to a point - he’s just a tidier version of Johnson, all style and no substance. He himself is very wealthy, his wife is wealthier still, and he has done some shady-ass things in the name of economic interests and his own self-interest. For example ... if you have a US green card but are permanently resident in another country, you are supposed to give up your green card. I speak from personal experience, and it was confirmed in the news awhile back when it was discovered that yeah, Sunak still had a green card that he was hanging onto Because Reasons. Which is stupid because with his money, he wouldn’t have any issue reapplying if he wanted one, but still, hedging his bets.

Honestly, that’s not so bad, I guess. What is bad is his basically aiding and abetting his wife’s tax avoidance and defrauding the Covid support fund. I mean, she got support for her chain of gyms and then shut them down before she was expected to repay it. This apparently happened with a lot of businesses, that or something like it, but this is his wife. And having the wife he lives with claim non-domicile status to avoid paying taxes on her clothing business while he himself had to be a UK resident as Chancellor of the Exchequer ... well. I mean. Come on.

The worst of it, I think, is that he has no real idea what people who aren’t obscenely wealthy need in order to live. Yes, he presided over the £20 Universal Credit uplift. He also presided over snatching that away despite the double-tap of Covid and Brexit making that £20 per week the difference between ‘coping’ and ‘starving’. He gave a speech at one point in which he tried to tell the people that he understood their struggles because “We have four kinds of bread in my house”. Dude, most people would be happy to buy bread at all at this point, and would consider anything but the supermarket own-brand stuff a miracle; shut up. He also seems to do photo shoots to demonstrate what kind of “man of the people” he is ... and fucks it up so badly. He wanted to be photographed putting petrol in an “ordinary car” ... but he didn’t have one of those so he borrowed the car of one of the staff at the supermarket / petrol station specifically to put petrol in it. (Hopefully he at least didn’t expect the staffer to pay him back for the petrol, that’s assuming he actually started the pump going and didn’t just put the empty nozzle in; I never heard how that went.) Also wanted to have photos of him paying for his shopping ... but couldn’t even figure out how to tap his credit card at the contactless payment machine. He had very clearly never done that before. I gather he orders things from fancier places and has a credit account or something. Either way, his attempts at looking like “a man who understands people’s everyday lives and struggles” just made him look like a posh, entitled noit.

I mean, he’s better than Johnson. And I can see why they picked him, and why they might have picked him even if Mordaunt hadn’t dropped out of the race. Yeah, he’s not white, and that probably would have been a turn-off for the members of the Conservative party ... but Sunak is a money-man. More to the point, he’s a money-for-the-already-financially-endowed man. He’s not going to tighten any tax avoidance loopholes. He’s not going to tax businesses. He literally bragged at one point that he took ‘levelling-up’ money from poorer areas to funnel into richer areas that didn’t need it. The Tories know what Sunak stands for - more inequality, but also more subtlety about it than Truss had. And they also know that he looks and acts like a grown-up, so he’ll probably play well with at least some of the voters. And the Tories can now rub it into Labour’s faces that they were not only the first ones to get a woman into 10 Downing Street, but now the first ones to get a non-white person into 10 Downing Street, and insist that on that basis they can’t be racist. Except the problem is that if you really look at the POC in the Tory party, you’ll find a fair few instances of boomerang bigotry, of making much of how their families were refugees and then pulling up the ladder behind them and dreaming of sending people just like them to Rwanda.

Basically, Sunak’s a combination accountant and hedge fund manager, but how he’s going to be as an actual leader, in any instance that doesn’t directly involve the economy? I have a feeling it’s going to be just a classier version of Johnson’s daily parade around places in hi-vis cosplay; more style than substance. But, if it has to be Tories at all, I guess at least it’s not Johnson. That’s a silver lining, I guess.

(Oh, and people are bitching about how Labour is saying that if there was a general election and they did win said general election, they “couldn’t fix things as fast as they’d like”. Which everyone thinks is a cop-out, like there should be an instant fix to the political and economic disaster area the UK has become. Except ... no. No, Starmer’s doing something that we need to see more of in politics - he told the truth. There is no easy fix to this. This mess requires repair at the foundational level. There are things that could be done to make life easier for those who are terrified of starving, freezing, and/or being rendered homeless, but the actual problem? That’s going to take years to fix properly. I guess I get being leery of long-term strategies when the ones that have previously been thrown at us involved immediate benefits for the wealthy and a promise of maybe jam tomorrow for everyone else, but ... oh, fuck it, I have no idea anymore. I’m just really sick of ending up with a change in prime minister and consequently of manifesto without having been remotely able to vote for it.)

[davidpwilson2564]

Bloglet

Thursday, September 26, 2024

Alex Jones of InfoWars fame is being put out of business. Among other things, a Sandy Hook denier. Every now and again the good guys win. (I remember him cheering on the insurrectionists on Jan 6. What an odious pig.)

Ever the huckster, Trump is selling a Trump wristwatch. Price: up to $100,000. Does a little ad for it. The reality show candidate.

More about Mayor Eric Adams. It is guessed that he will surrender. I can't imagine he'd be jailed. Funny how so many of his associates jumped ship.

Nice weather. I try to get in my steps. Not to do so would be a real setback. The ideal, one guesses, would be to walk an hour a day. I don't quite make that but keep trying.

With all of the events going on at the U N, city traffic is an awful mess. Kenichi says it took him four and a half hours to come from Queens to Carnegie Hall (ten miles). I don't know how he does it.

Clay Higgins not at all contrite. Says his rant is protected. First amendment. Freedom of speech.

Friday, September 27, 2024

Very nice day. Errands. The usual.

Note: Trump meets with Zelensky, at Trump Tower. Why? If their conversation is not recorded Trump will tell numerous lies. A faucet of lies...

Eric Adams continues to proclaim his innocence. Says he will not resign.

Hurricane Helene. Much flooding in Florida, Georgia, East Tennessee. Asheville under water. Very bad.

Saturday, September 28, 2024

In the morning my phone started beeping (pinging). A notice showed up...someone or something was "tracking me." The sound was persistent, then stopped. Yet another mystery.

Rain. Cool. But I go out as usual. My routine unchanged.

Trump makes another of his doomsday speeches. Calls Kamala "mentally impaired." He has said several times that she's crazy. Trump's lackeys concur.

Note: Melania has made a tape regarding all of her husband's good points. He's warm. He's funny. He loves his family, etc. You can bet the meter was going while she recorded this. Ka-ching.

The merch keeps on coming. Now DJT is hawking a commemorative coin. Geez. And Melania is selling a necklace. Good that the Trumps have an interest in common. It brings to mind Home Shopping Network.

to be continued

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How cable monopolists tricked conservatives into shooting themselves in the face

No matter how hard conservative culture-war cannon-fodder love big business, it will never love them back. Take network policy, where rural turkeys in Red State America keep on voting for Christmas, then profess outrage when Old Farmer Comcast gets to sharpening his ax.

For two years, the FCC has been hamstrung because MAGA Senators refuse to confirm Gigi Sohn, leaving the Commission with only four commissioners. What do the GOP have against Sohn? Well, to hear them tell of it, she’s some kind of radical Marxist who will undermine free enterprise and replace the internet with tin cans and string.

The reality is that Sohn favors policies that will specifically and substantially benefit the rural Americans whose senators who refuse to confirm her. For example, Sohn favors municipal fiber provision, which low-information conservatives have been trained to reflexively reject: “Get your government out of my internet!”

Boy, are they ever wrong. The private sector sucks at providing network connectivity, especially in rural places. The cable companies and phone companies have divided up the USA like the Pope dividing up the “New World,” setting out exclusive, non-competing territories that get worse service than anyone else in the wealthy world. Americans pay some of the highest prices for the lowest speeds of any OECD nation.

For ISPs, bad service is a feature, not a bug. When Frontier went bankrupt in 2020, we got to look at its books, which is how we discovered that the company booked the one rural customers with no alternative as “assets” because they could be charged more for slower, less reliable service:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

We also learned that Frontier had calculated that it could make an extra billion in profit by bringing fiber to three million households, but chose not to, because it would take a decade to realize those profits, and during that time, executives’ stock options would decline in value as analysts punished them for making long-term bets.

We can bring fiber to rural America, and when we do, amazing things happen. McKee, Kentucky — one of the poorest places in America — used federal grants and its New Deal era rural electrification co-op to bring fiber to every household, using a mule called Ole Bub to run it over difficult mountain passes, and the result was an economic miracle:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

The only Americans who consistently say they like their ISPs are people who live in the 700+ small towns that have run their own fiber, mostly in Red States:

https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

Small wonder that rural Americans prefer muni fiber to commercial ISPs’ offerings. When Trump’s FCC Chair Ajit Pai gave them billions in subsidies to improve rural connectivity, the monopolists spent it pulling new copper lines, not fiber — which would have been thousands of times faster.

Given all that, it takes a lot to convince rural Americans that municipal fiber is bad for them. Specifically, it takes disinformation. More specifically, it takes the lie that municipal fiber would result in “government interference” in users’ communications.

Boy, is this ever wrong. Private companies are free to set their own content moderation policies, and can discriminate against any viewpoint they wish. They can and do remove “lawful but awful” speech like racist diatribes, vaccine denial, election denial, and other conservative fever-dreams.

Contrast that with local governments, who are bound by the First Amendment, and prohibited from practicing “viewpoint discrimination.” This means that if a local government allows one viewpoint on a subject, they are generally required to allow all other viewpoints on that subject. This is how we get the Satanic Temple’s excellent stunts, like demanding that towns that display Christian icons on public lands also display statues of Baphomet right next to them.

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/17/639726472/satanic-temple-protests-ten-commandments-monument-with-goat-headed-statue

When your town government runs 100gb fiber into your basement or garage, it will have a much harder time blocking you from, say, running a Mastodon instance devoted to election denial or GhostGun production than your commercial ISP will. Convincing American conservatives to hate municipal broadband was a gigantic self-own:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/17/turner-diaries-fanfic/#1a-fiber

Even worse is what rural America has been sold instead of municipal fiber: Starlink, the My Pillow of broadband. Starlink sells itself as blazing-fast satellite broadband, but conspicuously fails to talk up the fact that every Starlink user in your neighborhood competes for the same wireless spectrum as you, so the service can only get slower and more expensive over time:

https://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/starlink-nov-2022-data-caps.html

There’s been a concerted smear campaign against Sohn, and one of the major talking points is that Sohn is anti-cop because she sits on EFF’s board, and EFF wants to place limits on police access to commercial surveillance data. Which is wild, because one of EFF’s demands is limits on geofenced reverse warrants, where cops ask Google to reveal the identity of everyone who was in a specific place at a specific time. If you’ve heard about geofenced warrants lately, it was probably in the context of conservative outrage at their use in rounding up the January 6 insurrectionists.

Now, the primary use of these is to target Black Lives Matter demonstrators and other protestors, and EFF advocates for the normal Fourth Amendment rights that everyone is guaranteed in the Constitution. Conservative pundits didn’t give a damn about geofenced warrants until the J6 affair, and now they do — but they still insist that Sohn should be disqualified from sitting on the FCC because she shares their outrage at the abuse of private surveillance data by law enforcement.

All this raises the question: why have all these Red State senators made it their mission in life to block the appointment of an FCC commissioner who would deliver so many benefits to their constituents? It’s hard to say, of course, but Luke Goldstein has a suggestion in today’s American Prospect:

https://prospect.org/politics/democratic-majority-at-the-fcc-still-blocked/

“A torrent of lobbying money from the telecom industry has flooded Washington to block Sohn’s arrival at the FCC. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and T-Mobile doled out over $23 million lobbying Washington this year.”

And why would these companies spend millions to block Sohn from sitting on the Commission? Because she would help the Democratic majority pass policies that make broadband cheaper and faster for America, especially rural America where costs are highest and service is worst, and this will limit the telco monopolists’ profits.

There’s a new Democratic senate majority that’ll sit in 2023, so perhaps Sohn will finally be seated and start delivering relief to all Americans, even the turkeys who can’t stop voting for Christmas.

[Image ID: A hunter in camo firing a rifle whose barrel has been bent back to point at his own face. A muzzle flash emerges from the barrel. The hunter wears a MAGA hat. Behind the hunter is a telephone pole with many radiating lines. In the bottom left corner of the image is a 1950s-style illustration of a broadly smiling salesman, pointing at a box that is emblazoned with the logo for ALEC.]

[wyrmfedgrave]

Trump Slammed By His Alma Mater Over His Insanely Bad Economic Plan

The prestigious Wharton Business School did a mathematical analysis of both presidential nominees' economic plans - & tRump's failed spectacularly!

His tax breaks for the rich & high tariff ideas are "absolute... disasters waiting to happen."

Rump's economic plans would add $6 Billion dollars to the American deficit!!

The Democratic plans add $2 Billion to the deficit.

But, also cuts that amount in half - by raising only corporate taxes.

No programs will have to be cut...

And, a record 16 Nobel Prize winners all agree with the Democratic plans!

End?

Don't Bet On It!!

Necessity changes all things.

[bllsbailey]

Here's the Sentence That Perfectly Describes the Biden White House Right Now

Axios’ Alex Thompson

summarized this piece succinctly: “Democrats are in disarray.” After last Thursday night’s disastrous debate, Thompson went on CNN to explain how this is the Biden the White House has tried to hide from the public. Every time someone inquired about the president’s mental health, it was met with gaslighting and deflection. 

Every pivot the White House probably had primed to go this cycle got torched in 90 minutes last week, setting off a panic among Democrats unseen in years. Some want Biden gone; others are reportedly asking for donation refunds. Aides at the White House have also been leaking details about the president, notably that he’s only semi-functional between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. The latest report shouldn't shock anyone—“everyone is freaking the f**k out.”  It's the perfect sentence to describe the chaos. Yet, the official that arrogantly said that the same people panicking will be the ones asking for Christmas party invitations also captures the other side of this campaign: they truly think they’re going to win (via Axios) [emphasis mine]: 

Quotes like this are really harmful to President Biden. The campaign and WH is filled with brilliant, thoughtful, dedicated people who are working their asses off. This just sounds petty, vindictive and childish. https://t.co/1f9rcQEEJ6— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) July 3, 2024

Biden's performance at the debate has left many of his own aides worried about his mental fitness, and angry about what they see as a lack of candor from Biden's senior aides.  "It's the first topic of every conversation," one White House official said. "Senior leadership has given us nothing. To act like it's business as usual is delusional." Another official put it more bluntly: "Everyone is freaking the f*** out."  "The uncertainty after Thursday is palpable and anxiety is only increasing," a third White House official told Axios.  "People are looking for leadership and direction that they were told to trust, and hoped was there, but aren't yet feeling in what is now clearly a defining moment for this presidency."  […]  Part of Biden's team sees the debate as just one bad night that will blow over, and points out that many of the president's critics previously have counted him out when he faced challenges.  One longtime Biden aide told Axios: "Davos Dems love to hedge their bets against us and get hysterical, like they did in 2019. And just like after 2020, they will come back with their DNC convention lanyards in their hands, begging for Christmas party invitations and then for a plus-one."  …Axios granted several Biden officials anonymity to describe the atmosphere in the White House and on the campaign in the days since the debate.  One Biden confidante told Axios: "For everyone who really cares about Biden and his legacy, the debate was just painful to watch."  "It's dark," said an official involved in the campaign. "It feels like there is zero leadership or information… 

A rebound for Obama after his poor debate with Mitt Romney in 2012 was expected, and we could believe that it would happen since the 44th president had political skill. He also wasn’t 1,000 years old like Biden. The skeleton of this presidency is that the Delaware liberal, who led an unremarkable career and only ascended to the vice presidency because a younger, more talented Democrat picked him as his running mate, was never built to lead the country. Obama knew it. A global pandemic and the exposure of a dreadfully shallow 2020 Democratic field allowed Biden to “win” the 2020 election.

Even his closest aides credited the pandemic with the 2020 results. Biden likely would have been trounced by Trump, who was at the helm of a booming economy that was derailed by the pandemic and whose mental and physical limitations might have been laid bare if he had been forced to campaign publicly under normal circumstances.

Democrats are propping up a candidate they never truly liked or felt was a legitimate frontrunner, whose declining mental health and age have left them trapped in a no-win situation. Biden was never made of presidential timber when he was younger. It’s even more apparent now. You can’t spin or polish someone who was never it, and it’s far too late for Democrats to do anything about it. 

Welcome to hell, liberal America.

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[unbounded-cardinality]

The Perilous Prospects of a 2nd Trump Presidency

Clinton Presidency: 1993-2001

The conventional wisdom is that Bill Clinton was a brilliant president who oversaw a booming economy, a balanced national budget, largely peaceful relationships abroad, and the ascent of America as the world's sole superpower.

I never liked the guy.

From the moment I saw his first interview on television, there was something in his delivery that I intuitively perceived as disingenuous. Maybe it was my Texan roots that viewed an Arkansan president with suspicion. Or maybe it was the smiles. Or maybe the hairdo. Who knows.

But like so many, I voted for President Clinton because I viewed him as the least worst choice for our country. It was only years later that I learned -- mainly through 2nd-hand stories -- the perilous place we entered in the wake of the Clinton presidency.

First week of Clinton presidency

Reportedly, during President Clinton's first week of presidency, department heads across the government visited the Oval Office, but notably one -- the Director of the CIA -- was kept at bay for over an hour, waiting outside the president's office wondering if his meeting with the new president would ever happen.

One hour waiting for Clinton. Director of the CIA.

In the wake of that meeting, President Clinton proceeded to restructure national intelligence -- leading to the removal of numerous staff, the minimization of agents abroad, and the erosion of national budgets for the sleuthing that protected American interests for decades, both home and abroad.

Is it any surprise that 9/11 caught America off guard?

Not to me. By the time jets struck The Pentagon and World Trade Center, America had exactly one agent on the ground in the entire country of Afghanistan. (NOTE: I might have the country and number here mistaken, but the general point is valid -- intelligence services in the mideast suffered sharp setbacks under the Clinton presidency.)

Second Trump presidency would be decisively unsafe for America

If President Clinton -- unintentionally perhaps -- made America less safe, a second Trump presidency would be a perilous journey into the unknown. Here are the reasons why.

First, the quality of cabinet and staff members around the president is sure to degrade under a 2nd Trump presidency. The reason is simple: because entering Trump's galaxy is a fool's bet that you want get into trouble, too. Witness the credible cases against politicians who pre-Trump were widely respected. Who did Trump take down and how bad have they fallen? You can tally for yourselves. The question for voters is: would we have an operational presidency at all if Donald Trump is elected a 2nd time?

Second, a quality of both the modern G.O.P. and President Trump himself is what might be generally called "payback". With so many grievances weighing down both, it is conceivable a 2nd Trump presidency would be less about leading and more about vengeance. Can we, for example, expect a functional FBI that is protecting American interests? I wouldn't count on it. Recent history suggests, instead, that FBI interests would be hamstrung by Trump attacks and, worse, contending with the politicization of their own ranks. In short, a 2nd Trump presidency would be roiled by internecine struggle -- the kind that resembles what happened in Israel in the months and years leading up to October 7th.

Third, American business will suffer. This is counter-intuitive because the G.O.P. is decisively pro-business. Unfortunately, we have to confront the distinct character of the modern G.O.P.: that it is consumed with social causes (immigration, objectionable school curricula, political correctness) and will end up inflaming the country instead of focusing on decisions that might steer the economy forward. This, to me, is the real tragedy of the modern G.O.P.

Fourth, a 2nd Trump presidency would go beyond bellicose rhetoric and likely carry America directly into wars. My first guess is that Trump would tackle the "low-lying fruit" -- going after Mexico and other regimes south of the border. But I would not rule out a more expansive military footprint, either in the Pacific or elsewhere. A 2nd Trump presidency, in short, would neither have the wisdom of advisors that might hem in an autocrat, nor the inclination to avoid war.

Fifth, and perhaps most sadly, a 2nd Trump presidency quite possibly would see the erosion of the rule of law, a higher frequency of kangaroo courts and their dubious decisions, a suspension of habeus corpus within the union, the erection of something like concentration camps across the American Southwest, and a judiciary that is not independent at all.

January 6, 2024