The mainstream media, overwhelmed by so many mass shootings and the immense scope of Trump crony-corruption, has overlooked the real story behind the retirement of SCOTUS Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy claims he just wants to spend more time with his family; the truth is, he might be getting out one step ahead of Robert Mueller's clutches.
It turns out Justice Kennedy has a "special" relationship with Donald Trump. Kennedy's son, as head of Deutsche Bank's global real estate capital department, loaned Trump over $1 billion at a time when no other bank would go near Trump's notoriously fraudulent real estate schemes.
During young Kennedy's tenure, Deutsche Bank became Trump's most important lender, dispensing well over $1 billion in loans to him for the renovation and construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago. According to an analysis by Bloomberg, Trump now owes Deutsche Bank around $300 million. He has four large mortgages, all issued by Deutsche's private bank. The loans are guaranteed against the president's properties, including a new deluxe hotel in Washington DC's old Post Office. But Trump leases the Post Office, meaning he cannot take out a mortgage on it. What he has is a loan that he "personally guaranteed." These shady financial arrangements are indicative of a shell game, possibly as part of a money laundering scam for Russian oligarchs.
Deutsche Bank has long been suspected of financial dirty dealings with Putin and his cronies. In January, the bank was fined $630 million by the U.S. Department of Justice for helping Russian oligarchs launder their money. One common way for crooked banks to launder money is to invest it in fraudulent real estate transactions, like the ones commonly affiliated with Trump hotels. Hotels are erected and space is rented by anonymous parties, but the buildings go unoccupied and the leases are sold for enormous profits in due time. If the government looks the other way, the laundered money comes out clean on the other end. This would explain Trump's overly cordial and complementary disposition towards Putin, and his cozy relationship with a Supreme Court Justice who just happens to retire right before the Mueller investigation reaches its conclusion.
The Trump/Kennedy conversation of February 2017 now takes on more sinister connotations. After his first address to Congress, Trump went out of his way to engage Kennedy:
"Say hello to your boy," Mr. Trump said. "Special guy."
Kennedy responded in kind by thanking Trump for the special treatment that his son was afforded by the Trump family.
Trump isn't the only member of his administration with deep ties to Deutsche Bank. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also has a tangled and seedy relationship to the bank. And Jared Kushner's real estate company finalized a $285 million loan with Deutsche Bank right before the election, which he subsequently failed to disclose.
In May, House Democrats asked Deutsche Bank "to hand over its findings on two politically charged matters — its banking on behalf of Trump and trades from the bank's Moscow operation that helped move some $10 billion out of Russia." They refused, citing client confidentiality.
But now Special Counsel Robert Mueller has issued a subpoena requesting the bank turn over its documents relating to its Trump family transactions. Kennedy's son will certainly be a key figure in those transactions. And his links to Russian oligarchy money laundering will undoubtedly be exposed.
Given this new information, it is illuminating to look back now on Justice Kennedy's recent decisions on controversial cases. He ruled in favor of dark money invading politics, opining that corporations would not necessarily corrupt politicians. He has also ruled in favor of Trump's racist immigration ban, casting the deciding vote in the 5-4 decision. It appears not even the highest court in the land is free of the rotten poison of Trump's vast corruption.
It is fair then to ask: Why is Kennedy really retiring? Was he paid off? What involvement/knowledge does he have concerning Trump's money laundering connections with Russian oligarchs? Is he afraid he will be subpoenaed by Mueller? Did he resign to allow Trump to choose another right-wing lunatic judge while he still can?
What we do know is that Kennedy rode off into the sunset one step ahead of Mueller's posse.
www.amazon.com/dp/1948260085
Friday, June 29, 2018
Monday, June 25, 2018
How Does Trump Maintain 90% Approval Rating Among Republicans? Here's How.
It is now beyond dispute to those who hold facts in high regard that Donald Trump is the most corrupt, treasonous and criminal president to ever sit in the Oval Office. He laundered money for Putin’s oligarchs. His allegiance is to Russia, not the US. His business dealings were failed, fraudulent scams. He is a compulsive liar, a misogynist and a racist. He has the verbal acumen of a 3rd grader. He sympathizes with Nazis, white supremacists and authoritarian governments. He heartlessly jails innocent children and separates them from their parents. He attacks the free press and openly drools over jailing his opponents. He is a conscienceless narcissist concerned only with his own self-enrichment. His vacuous twit of a daughter and her greedy husband have used their power in the US government to profit from foreign investments. Don Jr. openly colluded with Russian nationals to get daddy elected. Trump cares not one whit about the destruction of the planet, wasteful military spending, the eradication of social safety nets, and the mass murders perpetrated by his chummy dictator pals. He signed a meaningless agreement with Kim, and in the process gave Putin what he wanted--the end of American war games on the Korean peninsula. In fact, Trump seems to be acting as Putin's surrogate. Which raises the possibility that our President is being blackmailed by a foreign power.
Trump feels empathy for no one but his miserable self. He insults our allies, has no concept of the importance of diplomacy, and is willing to destroy our institutions to save his own skin. We will be lucky to survive his four years without our country becoming a third-world wasteland. He has surrounded himself with fascist toadies, wife-beaters, greedy sycophants and warped bigots. His family is an international embarrassment, and they have made America a laughingstock. In short, Trump is a stupid, amoral pig. The worst president in our history; yet his poll numbers among Republicans are on the rise. The more criticism he receives from the left, the deeper his supporters dig in. How can this be? Are right-wingers oblivious to the facts? Do the facts even matter to them? Yes to the former. No to the latter.
A recent New York Times article quotes some of his supporters: “It makes me angry [when the media criticize him], which causes me to want to defend him to [him] more,” Ms. Gina Anders said.
The Times puts it this way: "In interviews across the country over the last few days, dozens of Trump voters, as well as pollsters and strategists, described something like a bonding experience with the president that happens each time Republicans have to answer a now-familiar question: 'How can you possibly still support this man?' Their resilience suggests a level of unity among Republicans that could help mitigate Mr. Trump’s low overall approval ratings and aid his party’s chances of keeping control of the House of Representatives in November. For many Republicans, the audio of children sobbing at a migrant detention center barely registered, because these voters don’t pay attention to the left-leaning and mainstream media that have covered the family separation crisis far more than their preferred channel, Fox News."
There it is. There's your answer for how and why Trump's supporters can stubbornly cling to their nonsensical views: Fox News. The 24/7 propaganda arm of this administration--fact-free, vicious, conscienceless, non-stop support of a corrupt, vile, sociopathic wannabe dictator--provides justification for the Trump supporter. Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham and their ilk spew lies at a faster rate than a small mind like Gina Anders' can filter. Facts become moveable, malleable inconveniences. Trump's corruption is ignored. No time to think or question. All hail the fearless leader. Like North Korea's state-run TV, Fox pounds a simple narrative into the brains of its subscribers. Trump is doing a great job, and those who disseminate facts to the contrary are whining, bitter reprobates. Or as Jeff Butts put it to a NY Times reporter: “It’s just incredible what the nation is trying to do to disrupt this president and his agenda." The perverted agenda that is destroying the country.
www.amazon.com/dp/1948260085
Trump feels empathy for no one but his miserable self. He insults our allies, has no concept of the importance of diplomacy, and is willing to destroy our institutions to save his own skin. We will be lucky to survive his four years without our country becoming a third-world wasteland. He has surrounded himself with fascist toadies, wife-beaters, greedy sycophants and warped bigots. His family is an international embarrassment, and they have made America a laughingstock. In short, Trump is a stupid, amoral pig. The worst president in our history; yet his poll numbers among Republicans are on the rise. The more criticism he receives from the left, the deeper his supporters dig in. How can this be? Are right-wingers oblivious to the facts? Do the facts even matter to them? Yes to the former. No to the latter.
A recent New York Times article quotes some of his supporters: “It makes me angry [when the media criticize him], which causes me to want to defend him to [him] more,” Ms. Gina Anders said.
The Times puts it this way: "In interviews across the country over the last few days, dozens of Trump voters, as well as pollsters and strategists, described something like a bonding experience with the president that happens each time Republicans have to answer a now-familiar question: 'How can you possibly still support this man?' Their resilience suggests a level of unity among Republicans that could help mitigate Mr. Trump’s low overall approval ratings and aid his party’s chances of keeping control of the House of Representatives in November. For many Republicans, the audio of children sobbing at a migrant detention center barely registered, because these voters don’t pay attention to the left-leaning and mainstream media that have covered the family separation crisis far more than their preferred channel, Fox News."
There it is. There's your answer for how and why Trump's supporters can stubbornly cling to their nonsensical views: Fox News. The 24/7 propaganda arm of this administration--fact-free, vicious, conscienceless, non-stop support of a corrupt, vile, sociopathic wannabe dictator--provides justification for the Trump supporter. Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham and their ilk spew lies at a faster rate than a small mind like Gina Anders' can filter. Facts become moveable, malleable inconveniences. Trump's corruption is ignored. No time to think or question. All hail the fearless leader. Like North Korea's state-run TV, Fox pounds a simple narrative into the brains of its subscribers. Trump is doing a great job, and those who disseminate facts to the contrary are whining, bitter reprobates. Or as Jeff Butts put it to a NY Times reporter: “It’s just incredible what the nation is trying to do to disrupt this president and his agenda." The perverted agenda that is destroying the country.
www.amazon.com/dp/1948260085
Saturday, June 9, 2018
LBJ Stacked Warren Commission With Kennedy Haters to Cover His Tracks
Of all the things the mainstream media overlooked in the wake of the assassination, one of the most blatant indicators of Lyndon Johnson trying to cover his tracks was his cunningly shrewd selection of Warren Commission members. Republicans were in the majority, and nary a liberal was to be found, unless we count Earl Warren. As its titular head, Warren imbued the panel with an integrity it did not deserve; he had a reputation for progressive values and was despised by the extreme right-wing. Johnson saw his appointment as a way to appease liberals and Kennedy loyalists. But Warren was a reluctant appointee, and he rarely showed up for any of the hearings. The meat of the commission work was performed by Kennedy haters.
Johnson appointed just two Democrats—Richard Russell and Hale Boggs—both southerners who had opposed JFK’s domestic agenda especially in the area of civil rights. This is a polite way of saying that even the Democrats on the Commission were not Kennedy admirers. It is easy to forget that the Democratic party in the early 1960s was evenly split between conservatives and liberals. Southern Democrats were nearly unanimously right-wing ideologues; much the same way that Republicans are today. Many of them, like John Connally and Strom Thurmond, switched their party affiliation from Democrat to Republican when the domestic strife of the ‘60s caused politicians to choose sides that more closely identified with their policies. Today southern Democrats are as rare as southern Republicans were in 1963. The point is, Johnson could rely on his Dixiecrat friends to avoid digging too deeply into the ugly truths of who really planned and executed the murder of a President for whom they bore no love. Still in all, despite their political opposition to JFK, Russell, Sherman Cooper (Republican) and Boggs had misgivings about the commission’s findings that a single bullet struck both Kennedy and Connally. Not until John McCloy came up with compromise language did the three dissenters acquiesce to the others’ magic-bullet charade. But Russell, according to author Gerald McKnight, never understood the full ramifications of conceding to McCloy. McKnight writes that, “Because of Russell’s chronic absenteeism he never fully comprehended that the final report’s no-conspiracy conclusion was inextricably tied to…the single-bullet theory.240 Cooper may have been similarly oblivious—he attended barely half the meetings. Boggs’ attendance was also sporadic, but his dissent appeared to disturb the commission’s hierarchy more than others. He was bugged and followed by the FBI for years, and he vehemently objected to J. Edgar Hoover’s Gestapo tactics.
Over the life of the commission, it was three of the Republicans who exerted the most influence on the eventual whitewash: Allen Dulles, Arlen Specter (Dulles’s intrepid and ambitious lawyer) and Congressman Gerald Ford. Specter expertly badgered and discredited hostile witnesses (read, witnesses who had knowledge of conspiratorial activity) and concocted the magic-bullet scenario which allowed the commission to frame the dead patsy for the crime. Because of the time constraints inherent in a frame count of the Zapruder film, Oswald had only six seconds to fire three shots, and two of them—the complete miss and the head shot—were already accounted for. That left just one bullet to do the rest of the damage. Specter’s strained contrivance took care of that problem for the plotters. One bullet, he said, despite all evidence to the contrary, entered the President’s back, exited his throat, entered Connally’s back, broke his wrist, tore through his ribs, landed in his leg, and came out on a Dallas stretcher in pristine condition. No one but Specter saw this as an even remotely logical occurrence; still it exists in the official record today, despite the fact that no bullet fired in the history of the world has ever duplicated this feat, and despite the fact that no Parkland medical personnel saw a rear entry wound on the President’s body. The Bethesda doctors did see a rear entry wound, but the wound was too low on the President’s back to have exited his throat. The only way that wound could have been made was by body alterationists in transit from Parkland to Bethesda. The body alterationists created a wound that couldn’t be easily accounted for. Specter tried, but he needed a big assist from Gerald Ford to complete the sham.
Read more at www.amazon.com/dp/1948260085
Johnson appointed just two Democrats—Richard Russell and Hale Boggs—both southerners who had opposed JFK’s domestic agenda especially in the area of civil rights. This is a polite way of saying that even the Democrats on the Commission were not Kennedy admirers. It is easy to forget that the Democratic party in the early 1960s was evenly split between conservatives and liberals. Southern Democrats were nearly unanimously right-wing ideologues; much the same way that Republicans are today. Many of them, like John Connally and Strom Thurmond, switched their party affiliation from Democrat to Republican when the domestic strife of the ‘60s caused politicians to choose sides that more closely identified with their policies. Today southern Democrats are as rare as southern Republicans were in 1963. The point is, Johnson could rely on his Dixiecrat friends to avoid digging too deeply into the ugly truths of who really planned and executed the murder of a President for whom they bore no love. Still in all, despite their political opposition to JFK, Russell, Sherman Cooper (Republican) and Boggs had misgivings about the commission’s findings that a single bullet struck both Kennedy and Connally. Not until John McCloy came up with compromise language did the three dissenters acquiesce to the others’ magic-bullet charade. But Russell, according to author Gerald McKnight, never understood the full ramifications of conceding to McCloy. McKnight writes that, “Because of Russell’s chronic absenteeism he never fully comprehended that the final report’s no-conspiracy conclusion was inextricably tied to…the single-bullet theory.240 Cooper may have been similarly oblivious—he attended barely half the meetings. Boggs’ attendance was also sporadic, but his dissent appeared to disturb the commission’s hierarchy more than others. He was bugged and followed by the FBI for years, and he vehemently objected to J. Edgar Hoover’s Gestapo tactics.
Over the life of the commission, it was three of the Republicans who exerted the most influence on the eventual whitewash: Allen Dulles, Arlen Specter (Dulles’s intrepid and ambitious lawyer) and Congressman Gerald Ford. Specter expertly badgered and discredited hostile witnesses (read, witnesses who had knowledge of conspiratorial activity) and concocted the magic-bullet scenario which allowed the commission to frame the dead patsy for the crime. Because of the time constraints inherent in a frame count of the Zapruder film, Oswald had only six seconds to fire three shots, and two of them—the complete miss and the head shot—were already accounted for. That left just one bullet to do the rest of the damage. Specter’s strained contrivance took care of that problem for the plotters. One bullet, he said, despite all evidence to the contrary, entered the President’s back, exited his throat, entered Connally’s back, broke his wrist, tore through his ribs, landed in his leg, and came out on a Dallas stretcher in pristine condition. No one but Specter saw this as an even remotely logical occurrence; still it exists in the official record today, despite the fact that no bullet fired in the history of the world has ever duplicated this feat, and despite the fact that no Parkland medical personnel saw a rear entry wound on the President’s body. The Bethesda doctors did see a rear entry wound, but the wound was too low on the President’s back to have exited his throat. The only way that wound could have been made was by body alterationists in transit from Parkland to Bethesda. The body alterationists created a wound that couldn’t be easily accounted for. Specter tried, but he needed a big assist from Gerald Ford to complete the sham.
Read more at www.amazon.com/dp/1948260085
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