December 8, 2022

Trump grift goes on despite losing NYC case

 Trump grift goes on despite losing NYC case

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

DonkeyHotey caricature, illustration by Hal Brown
Despite losing the NYC case he will stay wealthy and stands to get richer with his deal in Oman. Only in prison his money won't do him any good. The easier to make documents case must be won but only the conspiracy to subvert the Constitution case could result in a long prison sentence. Getting out in a few months or years a wealthy man would be an affront to justice. 

So the Trump Organization lost the case in New York City and was fined a paltry $1million. If his pending deal to build a multi-billion dollar despot in Oman goes through it will be a drop in the bucket. Here's the story from Arab News.

Excerpt:

RIYADH: Saudi developer Dar Al Arkan has signed an agreement with former US President Donald Trump’s company to develop its $4 billion project in Oman, it said in a filing on the Tadawul on Sunday.  

The Trump resort will include residential villas, a hotel and a golf course. It will be located at Aida, a 100-meter-high hilltop project jointly developed by Dar Al Arkan and the Oman Tourism Development Co.   

The project will be developed over 10 years on an area of 3.5 million square meters and is expected to reach a joint investment of SR6 billion ($1.59 billion), the filing said.  

“We are always looking to enhance Dar Al Arkan's unique projects with premium facilities and experiences. Our partnership with Trump will distinguish our first venture in Oman and put it on the global map,” said Yousef Al Shelash, chairman of Dar Al Arkan, in a company statement.  

The 100-meter-high hilltop development is one of the largest premium mixed-use real estate projects in the world, situated by the sea. 

While here in the United States a Chicago paper called for 'jackhammering' controversial Trump name off of their Trump Tower (below).

It appears that in some countries having the Trump name emblazoned, no doubt literally in gold letters, on a humongous project is considered a major selling point.

Trump is beloved, even worshipped, by a terrifyingly large minority of Americans who would, if they could, elect him president for life. Residents of Democratic countries around the world look at the United States and are dumbfounded by how Americans could be taken in by this mentally unbalanced grifter. Of course, as I wrote yesterday, Democracies like Germany also have their problems.

The only way Trump can be punished for his crimes can will be to imprison him. As long as he stays out of prison he will be very, very rich. He'd luxuriate in all the trappings money buy. His wealth means he will have sycophants fawning over him. He won't have a true friend but he's a malignant sociopathic narcissist and as such doesn't care. With people like him, relationships, even with their spouses and family, are all transactional. They love themselves,  being worshipped, money, and power.

If Trump goes to prison he'd probably be isolated from the general population so he'd lose having inmates fawning over him.

If he's lucky the prison will let him play with his little putter in an isolated area of the prison yard:


He'd have to settle for guards who admire him to make his life a little more comfortable. Money will do him little to no good in prison unless he can bribe the guards to smuggle in goodies for him.

Perhaps they can bring him a poster for the wall of his cell:
 He can't buy out the commissary where his spending would be capped. Of course, regular readers know I try to document claims like this:

Excerpt:

Most facilities have individual limits of the amount of funds that inmates can have for commissary. Most do not allow an expenditure of over $ 300 per month on commissary items. However, in many federal and state facilities, an amount between $120 and $ 200 is quite a reasonable budget. There is always the question of how does an inmate know they have money? Well, after a deposit is made, an inmate receives a receipt after 24hours to three days.
He'd be able to buy snacks but the prison kitchen won't prepare special foods just for him. The best he might be able to do is convert to Judaism so he can get kosher meals. I heard kosher meals in prison were better than the regular fare. It turns out that generally this is true and has led to the "fake Jew" phenomenon.

Maybe yarmulke wearing Trump will go from Jerusalem to the big house...


They're two kinds of juries who will determine Trump's fate.  Grand juries are now or will be deciding whether to indict him, however only a trial jury can convict him of a crime and send him to prison. When it comes to where Trump ends up, it is fair to say one kind of jury is still out, and the other kind hasn't even begun to hear his case.

Recent blog stories:


'If you're new to the blog the archives in the right column will take you back through the period I began posting political stories and before that when the blog only had photo essays documenting road trips around Portland and Washington with photos of both scenery and unusual restaurants. Remember you can click the small images to enlarge them. These are from 2021.






at No comments:
Labels: , ,

December 7, 2022

Not just in U.S., Germany has it's far right conspiracy militia trying to overthrow government

Not just in U.S., Germany has it's far right conspiracy militia trying to overthrow government

Or at least until yesterday they did. I can't help but believe they  followed the reporting about January 6th attempted coup and its aftermath in the Untied States and were determined to succeed where they failed.

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >


Reich citizen terror group apparently wanted to eliminate the rule of law - police with 3000 officers on duty

The article, translated from Germany Google Translate, begins as follows:

In Germany, the Reich Citizens' Scene is in the sights of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Thousands of police officers have now gone out at the same time in eleven federal states for a major raid. According to the federal prosecutor's office, a group planned the state coup - and trained for "Day X" with weapons.

They are said to have planned a coup and also trained in part with weapons: On Wednesday morning, the federal prosecutor's office had 25 people from the so-called Reich citizen scene arrested in the course of a raid. Around 3,000 officials are deployed in eleven federal states, a spokeswoman for the Karlsruhe authority told the German Press Agency. She accuses the accused of having prepared the overthrow of the state. According to information from "Spiegel", the officers searched more than 130 apartments, offices and storage rooms.

Shades of The Oath Keepers, The Proud Boys, people with the disparate beliefs of QAnon and belief in the deep state.. They even had a leader like Trump set to take his place as dictator. They were a group Germans including those with a political ideology that rejected the government formed after World War II, according to this article. They not only included armed trained militia, some who were recruited from the police and army, but also adherents of QAnon, and Covid deniers. They were planning to storm the German Parliament Building.


Again there's the similarity to those who want to initiate a coup in the United States. They planned to storm their version of the U.S. Capitol and take over the government by violent means up to and including murder. The group's  own version of Donald Trump was Prince Heinrich XIII.
,

Acceding to this article the group "allegedly believed in a ‘conglomerate of conspiracy theories consisting of narratives from the so-called Reich Citizens as well as QAnon ideology. Prosecutors say the group think Germany is ruled by a so-called ‘deep state’ – echoing the baseless claims made by former President Donald Trump about the US.

This is more from The Mirror:

Germany's internal intelligence agency believes there are arond 16,500 members of the group across the country - many of whom are ready to commit "serious acts of violence". 

Deutsche Welle previously reported that the majority of them are over 50 years old and come from disadvantaged communities.

A district court judge in Saxony-Anhalt has described them as "conspiracy theorists" and "malcontents," DW adds. 

Several high-profile acts of extreme violence have shocked Germany and earned them the attention of law enforcement agencies. 

The group has an affinity for stockpiling ammunition and firearms - which have been discovered during previous raids.

This is the German Trump wannabe:

His family say he’s 'a confused old man caught up in conspiracy theories' (read article)


Like Trump he has a much younger wife:

Unlike Trump he's never been arrested and loaded into a police vehicle in handcuffs:

It is all beginning to sound more and more like déjà vu all all over again, only this time an attempted coup against a democracy is happening in the country whose NAZI regime was brought up by so many Democrats and anti-Trump republicans who invoked the spectre of Hitler. They recounted the early days of Hitler in the 1930's and how he positioned himself to take over Germany, and then take on the world in an attempted military conquest that would establish his 1000 year Reich.  This is what Trump and his cult hope to achieve in 2024 by any means necessary.

The arrest of those who are the 25 presumably top leaders of this German moment  which has 16,500 members hopefully will at least temporarily set back their plans and that German police, military, and intelligence agencies will begin the arduous legal and investigative process to dismantle this group.

I assume that they will be working with their law enforcement  counterparts in the United States and other democratic countries wherever there are right-wing groups made up of a witches brew of hate and off the wall conspiracy theories. I don't think it is a far stretch of imagination to believe these groups have relationships with similar foreign groups. I am afraid there are leaders around the world who want to achieve their fascist and autocratic rule just the way Hitler tried to do and came close to succeeding.



Most recent blog stories here:



at No comments:
Labels: ,

December 6, 2022

The GOP Bizarro World Dream 2024 Ticket

 The GOP Bizarro World Dream 2024 Ticket
By Hal Brown

Democrats are eager for Joe Biden to run against Donald Trump. He's easily the most beatable candidate, and if he continues to careen down the road he's been on ever since his meeting with Ye and Fuentes and his "suspend the Constitution" Truth Social rant he'll be even more beatable. 

Even if he slip-slides his greasy ass this way and that through all the legal traps that could ensnare him all it will take for President Joe Biden to beat him handily is for Trump to be Trump.

The venomous once and never again former president has, like all other poisonous creatures from scorpions to golden dart frogs, until now has been immune to his own toxin. 

This is where the comparison between Trump and animals ends because his poison isn't literally created by a physical mechanism. It didn't develop over time as it did in venomous species through natural selection. His developed he deployed it more and more frequently because it was not only in his character and satisfied his need as a malignant sociopathic narcissist but because it appealed to his base.

That hard-core base has been and will continue to be stable to matter what he does or what happens to him. However to beat Joe Biden he cannot depend on his base. He must have independent voters and never-Trump Republican voters, and turn off that voters who refuse to vote for a Democrat so much they just don't vote for president at all.

This presents only only course of action for Republicans who know that Trump is their party's likely 2024 candidate. 

They can't run a campaign again Joe Biden. They have to convince voters that a vote for him is a vote for Hunter Biden.

The Republicans are downright drooling over their plan to investigate Hunter Biden and try to tie him to then vice president Joe Biden and make the case that the vice president somehow colluded with his son in what amounted to treason against the United States.

The more one looks at Hunter Biden's past behavior the more an objective observer with a modicum of empathy who is not blinded by a zealous quest to hurt President Biden the more they will feel sorry for the president.

The saying I am not my brothers keeper, shades of Billy Carter, can be reworded to say I am not my son's keeper.

Joe Biden lost his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015 when he was only 45. Most people don't know that Biden had a daughter with his first wife Neila. Their daughter Naomi passed away in 1972 after being involved in a car crash with their sons Beau and Hunter critically injured. 

To say Hunter had a troubled past fraught with bad decisions and a cavalier disregard for how they might hurt his father personally and politically is an understatement.

Currently there are no plans to call President Biden to testify but I think Hunter will be called. If I had a say in the matter I would make sure he testified without an attorney and answered all the questions candidly. The committee has no power to indict him if he admits to breaking the law, only the Department of Justice can do that. As the New York Times notes, "the Justice Department inquiry into the business dealings of the president’s son has remained active, with a grand jury seeking information about payments from around the world."

Hopefully he will come across as a sympathetic figure, especially compared to his GOP interrogators some of whom are likely to try to intimidate and badger him in their attempts to score points with their MAGA base.

I'd say to the rabid GOP MAGA representatives slavering to get to President Biden through his son "bring it on" because when it comes to a there being there all they have is a president unlucky enough to have a very troubled son. 


at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Trump lives in my house and my mind like a giant disease carrying housefly. I just ordered a fly zapper. If only it was that easy to rid the country of this troublesome pest.

  When it comes to airborne evasive maneuvers Trump reminds me of the common housefly. When one gets in the house my partner won't let m...