Author: clearandpresentdanger

Wall Street is terrified of a Trump administration

With one Wall Street executive and GOP megadonor lamenting, “The street still hopes for somebody else,” Politico reports Monday that financiers and business executives are not pleased with the potential presidential candidate leaders — specifically Donald Trump. As the report notes, one thing Wall Street prizes above all — besides profits — is stability, and based on Trump’s wild swings on trade and finance during his first term, it was in short supply.

GOP donor Thomas Peterffy, founder of Interactive Brokers, claimed another Trump presidency portends “incalculable and unpredictable” risks while, at the same time, admitting he would likely vote for the former president if he lands the 2024 GOP nomination.

“Peterffy’s comments reflect the collective angst of Wall Street Republicans whose views on Trump are completely divorced from those of the GOP base, according to conversations with more than a dozen bankers, attorneys, political consultants and asset managers,” Politico reported before adding, “For some, the thought of a second Trump term will be enough to keep them off the field.”

“Wall Street likes predictability. And while some of the finance industry’s kingmakers might blanch at the thought of four more years of President Joe Biden, the potential dysfunction of a second Trump term could raise existential questions about the future of American democracy.”

Ripping her a new asshole!!

By now we know that Bridget Ziegler, co-founder of “Moms for Liberty” and her husband, Christian Ziergler, chair of the Florida Republican Party, were all about “family and morals” at the same time they were carrying on a three-way affair with a woman with whom Bridget regularly had lesbian sex.

Bridget Ziegler is on the Sarasota Count FL school board where she has railed against LGBTQ students, “pornographic books” in the school library, and all the usual rightwing bullshit.

And now she get’s what’s been coming to her:

Trump did, in fact, pass highly classified information to Russia

When the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, they found over 100 classified documents that Donald Trump was still hiding at various locations around the resort, including that infamous stack of boxes in a bathroom. However, even though what was recovered included some national security documents classified at the very highest level, that doesn’t mean the FBI found everything it was looking for.

Along with the documents, the FBI found empty folders that carried markings showing they had once held other classified documents. Some of the documents that were missing from those folders were sensitive enough that their titles or topics have still not been revealed.

But more than a dozen sources told CNN that there’s one fat binder of information that has been the target of a lengthy search since Trump left office. That binder contains critical documents concerning Russian interference in the 2016 election and the beginnings of the FBI investigation into connections between the Russians and the Trump campaign. The binder was in the White House days before Trump packed up to leave. It was the subject of a hurried last-minute effort to declassify and release documents. But minutes before President Joe Biden took over, it disappeared.

CNN reports that the vanishing binder put intelligence officials on high alert. Included in the missing documents is some of the most closely guarded national security information from both the United States and its allies. Since Trump left office, the documents have not been seen.

In the last few days before Trump decamped for Mar-a-Lago, the binder was at the center of a series of hasty actions and bizarre occurrences.

First, Trump ordered that the binder be brought to the White House, reportedly so that he could declassify and release the information. At the White House, documents were under the control of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a group of Republican aides while they attempted to determine what information had to be redacted and what could be released.

Some of the redacted information was reportedly declassified less than 48 hours before the inauguration of Biden. Meadows and his assistants made multiple copies of these documents and began distributing them to Republican legislators and right-wing journalists.

However, CNN’s sources report that the “copies initially sent out were frantically retrieved at the direction of White House lawyers demanding additional redactions.” Minutes before Biden was sworn in, Meadows ran to the Justice Department with a final version of some documents. What happened to those documents is not known.

The original binder disappeared.

Included in the binder was raw intelligence information collected by both the U.S. and NATO allies. Any release of that information would represent a threat to intelligence-gathering methods, sources, and agents in the field. If the documents contain an analysis of how effective Russia was in altering the outcome of the 2016 election, or recommendations for steps that could be taken to safeguard future elections, the binder might be seen as a blueprint for how a foreign power could effectively suppress democracy in America.

The word “binder” may make it seem that this was something brief. However, it was reportedly 10 inches thick and contained, in CNN’s words, “reams of information.” In addition to the raw intelligence from multiple sources, it also contained details of the FBI’s investigation. That the intelligence information was never declassified and made public is a good indication that there was no smoking gun in those documents that supports Trump’s allegations about the investigation.

The information contained in the binder is so sensitive that, according to CNN, before it was taken to the White House, Congress members and aides were required to have a top-secret clearance to see the binder. Even then, they could view the contents only in a locked compartment at CIA headquarters.

Meadows’ aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who gave some of the most compelling testimony during the hearings of the House Jan. 6 committee, wrote in her book “Enough” that Meadows burned so many documents after Trump lost the 2020 election that his suits smelled like a bonfire. However, according to her testimony during the hearing, Hutchinson doesn’t believe that Meadows burned the contents of the binder. Instead, she wrote in her memoir that she saw her former boss take it home.

Attorneys for Meadows deny that he has any classified documents. It’s unclear if the FBI has conducted any search for the binder at Meadows’ home or other properties. Trump’s allies claim that Trump would also like to get his hands on the binder so he can release information that might support his claims about the “witch hunt” origins of the FBI investigation. But the binder, and its contents, are still missing.

Dec, 13, 2023: Republicon wackjobs go batshit crazy

December 13, 2023:  Another day, Republicons lose their minds again.

In a day that was chock full of political stories in which batshit-crazy Republicans were launching attacks on Democrats, Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) made a key point. “We have not passed an emergency supplemental, a Farm Bill, or regular Appropriations,” he said. “The story is not what they are doing. The story is what they are not doing.”  

Schatz was referring to specific, vital measures that are not getting through Congress: the outstanding funding bill for aid to Ukraine and Israel, border security, and humanitarian aid for Gaza; the Farm Bill, which governs the nation’s agricultural and food assistance programs and needs to be renewed every five years; and the regular appropriations bills that Congress must pass and that House extremists tossed out former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) over because they wanted deep cuts that he had agreed with President Joe Biden not to make.

But there is a larger point behind Schatz’s observation. Republicans, especially the extremist wing, have garnered power by promising to stop the government from acting. The extraordinary gerrymandering in Republican-dominated states following Operation REDMAP in 2010 created such safe districts that Republicans did not need to worry about losing elections. That safety meant that their role was not to offer real legislative solutions to problems, but rather to gin up support for the party nationally by pushing party talking points on right-wing media. Those talking points focused on slashing the government, which they claimed was hurting their constituents by defending secular society and providing benefits to undeserving minorities and women.

Now, though, the Republicans are in charge of the House of Representatives, and they actually need to get work done. But extremist Republicans’ skill set involves pushing talking points to create a false reality that demands gutting the government, not legislating, which requires compromise and deep understanding of issues. 

We appear to be watching Republicans’ fake image crash against reality.

This morning was the scheduled date for the House Oversight Committee’s closed-door deposition from President Biden’s son Hunter. Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) subpoenaed him in early November, trying to find evidence that the president participated in illegal business deals before he became president. But, in fact, the committee is making its case entirely by innuendo—it has turned up no evidence of any such schemes—and publicly misrepresented the closed-door testimony of Hunter Biden’s former business partner to say the opposite of what it did.

So Hunter Biden’s lawyers called their bluff, saying the younger Biden would be happy to testify…but only in a public hearing, so that his testimony could not be misrepresented. The committee refused that offer, saying he must appear behind closed doors, a condition that seemed to undercut their claim they want transparency.

Today, Hunter Biden turned the tables on their habit of giving press statements by showing up himself outside of the Capitol to reiterate that he would answer “any legitimate questions” in a public hearing. “Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say. What are they afraid of?”

He offered his own statement. “Let me state as clearly as I can,” he said. “[M]y father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member of Burisma, not in my partnership with a Chinese private businessman, not in my investments at home nor abroad, and certainly not as an artist,” he said. “There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business, because it did not happen,” he said.

He portrayed his father as a loving parent who supported him through his addiction struggle, and noted that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) had showed naked photos of him in a committee hearing, taking “the light of my dad’s love for me” and presenting it “as darkness.”

Republicans say they will prosecute Hunter Biden for contempt of Congress because he defied a subpoena. But that, too, is awkward, as a number of Republican representatives—including Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-OH)—ignored subpoenas from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Pushing the idea that there is a “Biden crime family” is a transparent effort to create confusion by suggesting that the Bidens are simply the Democratic version of the Trumps, whose family business, the Trump Organization, was found guilty of tax fraud in January 2023. Judge Arthur Engoron also found that company, along with Trump and his two older sons and two other employees, liable for bank fraud in September 2023 and is currently considering fines of at least $250 million and ending the Trumps’ ability to do business in New York. Testimony in that trial concluded today.

With no comparable Biden Organization, Republicans are trying to invent one.

Their effort to convince voters that President Biden is corrupt has led to the tail wagging the dog as, after hearing constantly about how lawless Biden is, their supporters have demanded that House Republicans launch an impeachment inquiry into him. Today, House Republicans unanimously voted to open such an inquiry, though the lack of evidence made them caution that such an inquiry did not mean they would ultimately impeach the president.

When asked what he’s hoping to gain from an impeachment inquiry, Representative Troy Nehls (R-TX) answered: “All I can say is Donald J. Trump 2024, baby.”

Biden reacted with uncharacteristic anger, calling out Republicans for ignoring the many imperative issues before them in order to “waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts.” He listed the nation’s unfinished business: funding for Ukraine and Israel, immigration policy, and funding the government to avoid “self-inflicted economic crises like a government shutdown, which Republicans in Congress are driving us toward in just a few weeks because they won’t act now to fund the government and critical priorities to make life better for the American people.”

Biden pointed out that having wasted weeks after tossing out their own House speaker and “having to expel their own members”—a reference to George Santos (R-NY), whom the House expelled two weeks ago—Republicans are now “leaving for a month without doing anything to address these pressing challenges.”

Republicans’ image has met reality today in another way, as well. In 2020, former president Trump insisted that Biden would tank the economy, but in fact, under Biden it has bloomed. Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average, one of the key measures of the stock market, climbed to a new all-time high, topping out at over 37,000. At the same time, unemployment has sat below 4% for months now, and inflation has fallen, showing that “Bidenomics” has been hugely successful. 

Tonight, though, Trump doubled down on Republican talking points, telling an audience in Iowa that unless he is reelected—presumably to reverse Biden’s policies—“we’ll have a depression the likes of which I don’t believe anybody has ever seen.”

But in an interesting rejection of House talking points in favor of reality, this evening the Senate passed a clean $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act, which gives a 5.2% pay raise to military personnel, by a vote of 87 to 13. House Republicans had loaded the measure up with a wish list of attacks on abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and diversity initiatives.

Tomorrow the measure will go to the House, where extremist Republicans angrily oppose it, but experts expect it will pass nonetheless.

University of Wisconsin Regents reject stupid Republican ideas

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Universities of Wisconsin regents narrowly rejected a deal Saturday reached with Republicans that would have given employees a pay raise and paid for construction of a new engineering building in exchange for reductions in staff positions focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.

The regents voted 9-8 during an emergency meeting to reject the deal reached Friday after being brokered by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.

“I don’t like this precedent,” Regent Dana Wachs said during the meeting. “We need to make this a welcoming environment.” The vote was immediately panned by leaders of the Assembly Republican caucus. “It’s a shame they’ve denied employees their raises and the almost $1 billion investment that would have been made across the UW system, all so they could continue their ideological campaign to force students to believe only one viewpoint is acceptable on campus,” the GOP leaders said in a statement.

The deal would have frozen hiring for diversity positions, dropped an affirmative action faculty hiring program at UW-Madison and created a position at the flagship campus focused on conservative thought. The engineering building would have been built at UW-Madison.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-regents-reject-deal-with-republicans-f50d00bf42cdd9196c79beef20313093

“. . . created a position . . . focused on conservative thought . . . !!?!?!?!?  And hired Tucker Carlson???  Bullshit.

Dear Republicans: You will never, never, ever wash the stink of Trump off you, never

Dear Republicans,

After the corruption of the Coolidge and Hoover administrations crashed the world economy, kicking off the Republican Great Depression in 1929, it took your party decades to rid itself of the stink.

After Nixon extended the Vietnam War to get himself re-elected, unnecessarily killing over 20,000 American soldiers and a million Vietnamese civilians, and then got busted for Watergate and the bribes he solicited in the White House, it took you almost a generation to rid yourselves of the stink.

But you’ll never rid yourself of the stink of Donald Trump. At least never in the lifetime of anybody around today. Trump’s stench is a tragic part of American history that will last generations.

The entire world knows the fetid odor of his whipping up a crowd of thousands to try to assassinate the Vice President of the United States and the Speaker of the House.

Trump’s minions urinated on the carpets in the hallowed halls of Congress, smeared feces on the walls, damaged priceless paintings from the founding era of our country, and murdered police officers protecting our nation’s Capitol. That stink will never fade, no matter how often his allies try to rewrite history, blur faces, or tell stories about bizarre “deep state” conspiracies.

Did you think Americans would forget the stink of the 30,000+ documented lies he told America and the world while he was president? Or the lies he routinely spouts every time he speaks in public, so frequent now that even Fox “News” has to correct the facts when covering him?

How about the reek of his dictator-like pronouncements that he will destroy the American Civil Service and fill our government with corrupt toadies, then imprison his political enemies and send the military into the streets like Maduro has done in Venezuela and tinpot dictators do all across the world?

Do you really believe that we would forget the stink of his sucking up to murderous dictators like Putin, MBS, and Kim? Now that effluvium is being smeared all over Republican politicians, one after another, as they follow Trump’s orders — which he no doubt received from Putin — to abandon Ukraine.

You are cowards, all. Covered in your wretched, cowardly, unpatriotic stink.

This is the man who tried to blackmail a democratic ally into manufacturing dirt on his political opponent, withholding aid to Ukraine in the face of Russian attacks. The stink of that crime was so heinous he was impeached for it.

What about the stink Trump created when he referred to mostly-Black nations as “shithole countries” and our veterans who’d died in war as “suckers” and “losers”? When he told General Mark Milley he didn’t want to again share the stage with an injured veteran because such heroes don’t “look good”?

Or when, at the height of the pandemic in April 2020, Trump ordered people back to work and began to ridicule wearing masks, leading to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths (according to his own science advisors: the British journal Lancet put the number at around a half-million)?

At that time, most Covid deaths were in Blue states (CT, NY, WA, NJ) and Trump agreed with Jared that they could politically benefit by blaming the deaths on Democratic governors. An “effective political strategy” they called this decision redolent with the stink of mass death.

That same son-in-law, by the way, who Trump helped hustle $2 billion from the Saudis in exchange, apparently, for downplaying the murder of a Washington Post journalist and looking the other way at how they oppress women. Do you think we failed to notice the reek of nepotism and corruption?

Speaking of women, do you really believe that stink of your support of a man credibly accused of rape and sexual assault by over 20 women, including one as young as 13, would just go away? Even after he was found by a court of law to have raped the first woman whose case finally made it through the courts?

As average working Americans struggle to pay their taxes, Trump pushed through an odious $2 trillion tax cut for himself and his billionaire buddies, creating the largest budget deficit by any president in the history of the nation. Do you think America will forget?

Or the stink of his multiple business frauds? He was convicted and forced to pay millions in restitution to victims of his Trump University fraud; they shut down his phony New York charity; now he’s been found by a New York court to have committed bank, tax, and insurance fraud: they’re just trying to figure out how big the stink is so they can quantify it as a fine.

How about the overwhelming stench of tearing babies from their mothers’ arms at the border and then trafficking them into phony “Christian adoption” services that then vanished, leaving over 1000 grieving families still not knowing the whereabouts of their little girls and boys to this day?

Or the stink from the naked campaign lies he blithely told to get votes, promising a new national healthcare system, a revitalization of America’s infrastructure, or his claims that he supported organized labor at the same time his appointees to the Department of Labor were working to block unionization efforts across the nation?

Even worse, this adulterer — who had affairs outside his marriage with every one of his three wives and never goes to church but still claimed to be a Christian — told sincerely religious people he was their champion. Not noticing the sulfurous smell that surrounds Trump, many believed him and still do. In actual fact, he was only championing the hypocritical multimillionaire TV preachers who shared their hustle with him: he supported their violations of tax law in exchange for their endorsement from the pulpit.

Then he tried to overthrow an election he knew he lost by 7 million votes, and is today threatening to try it again. The whole world is aghast at the stink of that tinpot dictator effort, and terrified that he may succeed the next time.

Germans still struggle with the stink of a leader who referred to his political opponents as “vermin” and promised he was going to “root them out.” Who attacked the press because they told the truth about him. Who played on and amplified people’s fear of “the other.” You will, too, for generations after Trump himself has shuffled off this mortal coil.

Pathetically, you Republican members of Congress have now smeared yourselves with the slime that has surrounded Donald Trump his entire criminal life. Have you noticed how many of your colleagues are fleeing? Do you really think you can ever wash off yourself the reek of your association with treason, an attempt to betray and overthrow America, even worse than what Benedict Arnold tried?

Seriously, Republicans, do you not think America can smell what’s going on? Trump bragging that he ended women’s rights to bodily autonomy? His promotion of guns and assault weapons because the racist nutcases who follow him think they’re going to be soldiers in a coming civil war? His refusal to do anything about the climate change that is now killing Americans every day?

America has had a few truly awful presidents. Andrew Jackson “The Indian Killer.” Andrew Johnson who tried to undo Lincoln’s legacy. Warren Harding and Teapot Dome. Richard Nixon’s criminality, Ronald Reagan’s commitment to destroy America’s middle class, George W. Bush lying us into two wars as part of his 2004 re-election strategy.

But none stink as bad as this miserable cartoon of a man, with his bizarre orange spray-tan, absurd comb-over, and compensatory phallic-length red ties.

America is not going to forget, and many Americans will never forgive.

You will never wash the stink of Donald Trump off yourselves or your party. Never.