Fu*%face Von Clownstick

treebing said:
My in-laws are magas and I think they could be out on the street homeless and destitute and they would still believe Trump is their messiah. They are not turning on him anytime soon.
Click to expand...
Omg that must be comfortable during the holidays, lol. Just curious, they are MAGA but your wife is not?

It is a weird concept tho, bright people who are MAGA. Currently, the one MAGAt I talk to is saying 'give it time, he know what he's doing'
 
Enrichment

By Eric Lipton,
NY Times

Now that President Trump is back in office, his family is profiting from his brand: At least $2 billion has flowed to Trump companies in just the last month. The ventures include real estate, a cryptocurrency and a private club slated to open in Washington with a $500,000 membership fee. Now, Qatar may give him a new presidential airplane.

The ethical mess is obvious. Trump is both the commander in chief and a business partner of foreign governments in Serbia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. The White House says his sons run his companies, so there’s no conflict. Legally, that’s true.

But Trump is still getting rich (or richer) from all of it. And that leaves incentives for the president to pay back his business partners with policy decisions designed to help them, which is how the law defines corruption. Today’s newsletter is a tour of the recent deals.

Crypto
  • $TRUMP is the family’s cryptocurrency, owned by the president and run by Donald Trump Jr. It has no inherent value beside what people will pay for it; the family describes it as a collectible — like a baseball card. But every time someone purchases a coin (currently worth about $13), the family gets a share. Recently, the president offered rewards. The top 220 buyers are invited to dinner with him next week at his Virginia golf club. The top 25 buyers also get a White House tour. The winners of the contest spent at least $174 million to buy $TRUMP coins.
  • Through an investment firm, the United Arab Emirates put $2 billion into the Trump family’s new cryptocurrency outfit, World Liberty Financial. The company, whose leaders include Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., will make tens of millions of dollars per year from the investment.

Real estate
  • Qatar chipped in to help finance a Trump-branded beachside golf and luxury villa project in the country worth $5.5 billion. (We don’t know how much it contributed.) The family will earn millions in licensing and management fees.
  • A real estate firm in Saudi Arabia (with close ties to the country’s government) invested $1 billion in the Trump International Hotel and Tower project in Dubai. The same company is planning to build other new Trump hotels, golf courses and luxury towers in Saudi Arabia and Oman. These, too, are branding deals that will pay the Trumps millions of dollars for their name.
  • During the Balkan wars, NATO bombed Yugoslavia’s Defense Ministry in Belgrade. Now Serbia’s president is leasing the land to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who will erect a Trump hotel on the site. Kushner’s private equity company — funded mostly by Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds — will help cover the $1 billion project.
Other deals
  • Plane: Qatar is planning to give a $400 million Boeing 747 aircraft to the president so he can use it as a temporary Air Force One. His presidential library will own the plane after his presidency, Trump says.
  • Members’ club: Donald Trump Jr. and other investors say they will open the Executive Branch, a private social club, in Georgetown this summer. Its members will include lobbyists, tech industry bigwigs and a sprinkling of White House officials, such as David Sacks, who is Trump’s crypto czar. The cost to join: $500,000.
  • Golf: LIV Golf, the new Saudi-backed golf league, hosted a professional tournament at Trump National Doral in Florida last month. The president arrived on a military helicopter to kick it off. The league is run by the head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. It paid the Trump family an undisclosed fee to host the LIV tournament. The event also drove thousands of fans to the hotel resort, selling out its rooms and restaurants.
  • Hotels: During Trump’s first term, dignitaries stayed at Trump properties and Republicans put on events there. These payments collectively were in the tens of millions of dollars. Payments like these have resumed. Groups like the Republican National Committee have put on events at the Doral resort and the Mar-a-Lago club, for instance.
Trump is pushing ethics guardrails. Republicans on Capitol Hill seem unlikely to challenge him:

As Trump Courts Gifts and Dangles Access, Congress Sits on the Sidelines
 
www.rollingstone.com

Flashback: Rage Against the Machine Rocks the 2000 DNC

Weeks before breaking up, Rage Against the Machine played a furious show outside the DNC
www.rollingstone.com www.rollingstone.com

This was such a badass show. I kinda freaked when I saw the fire trucks man the water cannons and hoses. That’s when I learned of the beef between LAPD and LADF. The used them as sprinklers so the crowd could cool off and wash off the chemical weapons.

 
cory said:
Omg that must be comfortable during the holidays, lol. Just curious, they are MAGA but your wife is not?

It is a weird concept tho, bright people who are MAGA. Currently, the one MAGAt I talk to is saying 'give it time, he know what he's doing'
Click to expand...
When she was growing up, fox news was not such a phenomenon. Its on in their house non stop now. My wife says when she was growing up they listened to NPR on the way to school. But now its fox news all the way.
 
treebing said:
When she was growing up, fox news was not such a phenomenon. Its on in their house non stop now. My wife says when she was growing up they listened to NPR on the way to school. But now its fox news all the way.
Click to expand...
I recently stopped listening to all news and took a break from IG. Significant life improvement. Still check headlines once a day just to make sure the sky isn’t falling. I’ve had times when I’ve been hyper focused on global and local issues but I decided this spring I want to actually enjoy my life for a little bit and it’s been wonderful.

Those nonstop news cycles are a drug.
 
I have a fear that trump will indeed unlock an economic boom by cutting regulations and and subsidizng energy production, resource extraction, timber oil gas, mining as well as ramping up military spending. Those actions really do make people, and the right people, very rich at least for the short term.

I also think that he will could very well clean up the streets from homeless people, criminals and migrants and make the streets shiny and safe as Bukele has done in El Salvador. Hitler did it too, rounding up all the alcoholic out of work veterans and putting them in work camps. Before even targeting the Jews and Roma. It made him very popular because, who wants to see poor and dirty people?

I can't argue with my mother in law about it because Those are things that she wants.

I care more about trees, clean water, clean air, biodiversity, human cultural diversity etc. Things that don't necessarily show up in the accounting process. I also don't think I should be required to live in a house or should be prohibited from sleeping in the streets or crossing borders without hassle.
 
I dig your sentiments overall but for the sake of discussion, when hundreds or thousands of people sleep in the street causing the 'hood to be trashed and unsafe for the housed locals, that don't seem right.

Not that I have the solution but just saying.
 
Nobody wants people sleeping in the streets. people do not want to be sleeping in the streets. I dont want to sleep in the streets but I feel very strongly that I should have the right to. I should be able to fall asleep pretty much anywhere I get tired except while operating a motor vehicle. I think there should be access to clean toilets and fresh water to clean oneself maintained by society. It would be much cheaper than cleaning up shit and piss from street.There are lots of ways I think it can be addressed that dont take away fundamental freedoms. Same with the border. I dont believe there are one way walls and I dont want my personal mobility restricted in order to restrict someone else's so I am one hundred percent opposed to any sort of wall that would inhibit my freedom of movement.
 
treebing said:
Nobody wants people sleeping in the streets. people do not want to be sleeping in the streets. I dont want to sleep in the streets but I feel very strongly that I should have the right to. I should be able to fall asleep pretty much anywhere I get tired except while operating a motor vehicle. I think there should be access to clean toilets and fresh water to clean oneself maintained by society. It would be much cheaper than cleaning up shit and piss from street.There are lots of ways I think it can be addressed that dont take away fundamental freedoms. Same with the border. I dont believe there are one way walls and I dont want my personal mobility restricted in order to restrict someone else's so I am one hundred percent opposed to any sort of wall that would inhibit my freedom of movement.
Click to expand...
Back in the day, in Portland they passed a ‘sit lay’ ordnance. One could not sit on the ground, edge of a planter box, or on a box window, or anywhere really. Of course this was selectively enforced for perceived undesirables.
I nearly got arrested, for sitting in the box window sill drinking my coffee outside of the shop I bought it in, all the outdoor seating was full. I pushed back and the cop escalated, I knew the owner and when a crowd gathered he came out and told them to f-off
 
Hey Dave, can you kindly show us the section of the Constitution which grants the President the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, or the power to impose tariffs?

And this latest decision is nothing more than a temporary stay of the lower court's decision that Trump's tariffs are unconstitutional, meaning the tariffs remain in effect while the appeal is pending.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New threads New posts

Back
Top Bottom