Trump's Card

[ad hoc]

Bush had some Muslim alliances; Trump has the Saudis (honorary whites in his perverse worldview) and...?

Well, at least this week, Erdogan

[Nefertiti2]

I found this moving

[URL]https://twitter.com/jewishaction/status/1181224228386942976?s=21[/URL]

[ursus arctos]

Good on them

In other news

[URL="https://twitter.com/numbersmuncher/status/1181542760739934208?s=21"]https://twitter.com/numbersmuncher/status/1181542760739934208[/URL]

[ursus arctos]

This is a long and depressing piece on just how ICE uses all of the apparatus of the surveillance state to disappear people

[URL="https://twitter.com/ursus_arctos59/status/1181418018657722369?s=21"]https://twitter.com/ursus_arctos59/status/1181418018657722369[/URL]

[ursus arctos]

[URL="https://twitter.com/johnjharwood/status/1182055485375160320?s=21"]https://twitter.com/johnjharwood/status/1182055485375160320[/URL]

[San Bernardhinault]

It's 4% more on whether there should be an impeachment process, which I guess makes it around 55-35!

I'm amazed at how brazen the current strategy from the administration is: basically stating that as well as being unprosecutable, the President also can't be impeached by a Congress run by an opposition party. I'm glad that, for the time being, the public is seeing it as desperate but ridiculous.

[ursus arctos]

It all comes from seeking to appeal to only the most hardcore elements of the base and has to be driving GOP candidates who aren't in the deepest red states/districts to distraction.

[anton pulisov]

Trump is saying the Kurds ain't all that because they weren't there on the beaches of Normandy. He read that in an article that somebody wrote. A tremendously powerful article.

He is actually full on delusional now.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Hey, he got something right.

We should celebrate the fact.

[Lang Spoon]

Really? Fuckin hell. Why would any cunt align with these cunts ever again?

[Lang Spoon]

Unless you were a total cunt?

[ursus arctos]

[URL="https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1182291238759915528?s=21"]https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1182291238759915528[/URL]

[Ginger Yellow]

Campaign finance violations relating to the investigation, or separate?

[ursus arctos]

Not yet clear, though the working assumption is the campaign

[Satchmo Distel]

Parnas and Fruman are charged with making illegal straw donations, including a $325,000 contribution to the group America First Action. As The Daily Beast first reported, that donation actually came from an entirely different, undisclosed company owned by Parnas. It is illegal to donate to federal political candidates in the name of another person or entity.

Prosecutors allege a host of other, smaller straw donations designed, they say, to both evade federal campaign contribution limits and conceal the actual sources of the funds. Parnas is currently facing a civil lawsuit attempting to collect more than $500,000 that he owes a jilted business partner from a years-old movie deal gone bad.

In addition to the straw donations, prosecutors say that Parnas, Fruman, and their co-conspirators made donations using money provided by an unnamed foreign national, who was ineligible to contribute to federal political campaigns under U.S. law.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/giulia...finance-charge

Parnas and Fruman have been connected to Pete Sessions' policies towards Ukraine:

Parnas and Fruman had close relationships with top Ukranian officials and had business interests in the country, but did not register as lobbyists under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Parnas told OCCRP that they were acting on their own accord. But their meeting with Sessions raises “the thorniest red flag,” Washington lawyer and FARA expert Ron Oleynik told OCCRP. “That, to me, is clearly trying to influence an office of the United States toward Ukraine.”

https://www.texasobserver.org/pete-s...e-impeachment/

[Incandenza]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...vienna/599833/

Last night, when Rudy Giuliani told me he couldn’t get together for an interview, his reason made sense: As with many nights of late, he was due to appear on Hannity. When I suggested this evening instead, his response was a bit more curious. We would have to aim for lunch, Giuliani told me, because he was planning to fly to Vienna, Austria, at night. He didn’t offer any details beyond that.

Giuliani called me at 6:22 p.m. last night—around the same time that two of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were arrested at Dulles Airport while waiting to board an international flight with one-way tickets. As The Wall Street Journal reported this afternoon, the two men were bound for Vienna. The Florida businessmen, who are reported to have assisted Giuliani in his alleged efforts to investigate Joe Biden and his family ahead of the 2020 election, were charged with campaign-finance violations, with prosecutors alleging that they had conspired to funnel money from a Russian donor into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

But Giuliani, when confirming today that Parnas and Fruman were heading to Vienna on matters “related to their business,” told the Journal that he himself only had plans to meet with them when they returned to Washington. By this logic, Giuliani was also planning to fly to Vienna within roughly 24 hours of his business associates, but do no business with them while all three were there.

This morning, Giuliani told me he’d have to reschedule our lunch. I’ve tried to reach him since then, to discuss Parnas’s and Fruman’s arrests, among other things, to no avail. When I called at 3 p.m. ET to ask about his Vienna trip, a woman claiming to be his communications director answered the phone. I have called him more than 100 times over the past year, and this is the first time that has ever happened. She said she’d have to get back to me. As we spoke, I could hear a voice that resembled Giuliani’s shout “asshole” in the background. “Oh, sorry,” the woman told me. “He was talking to the TV.”

[ursus arctos]

Now this is starting to make more sense

https://twitter.com/olgaNYC1211/status/1178491803567296512

[Sits]

Nothing to see here.

[ursus arctos]

[WOM]

He's just lost his appeal on his taxes. He has to turn over the last 8 years.

[ursus arctos]

Unless

[Satchmo Distel]

They'd struggle to find a justification, like the Trump appointee who dissented today.

[ursus arctos]

Very much so, and I would personally be surprised if Roberts was willing to go along with the argument.

Rao (the dissenter on the Circuit Court) was one of the Federalist Society's most wingnut members, which is really saying something.

As to time, they wouldn't necessarily need to keep us hangin' on for long.

The court is very accustomed to dealing with emergency appeals, most commonly (but not exclusively) in the death penalty context.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Just having had a quick look at Trump's Twitter feed I see that someone has posted Revelation 13.5:

The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months.

[Wouter D]

Just having had a quick look at Trump's Twitter feed I see that someone has posted Revelation 13.5:

Uncanny.