Incompetent celebutante Donald Trump wants to be freeloader-in-thief
Greetings, fellow Dot Calm Readers, Freedom Fighters, and Truth Crusaders!
Here I am--happy Friday!
Am I your guilty pleasure?
Writing for you is mine!
I don't have a whole essay kicking around in my haid today, but I do have a few random thots to share before I invite you to scroll down for news you can use to help you vote (Hillary and blue all the way down)...with my little commentaries peppered along the way.
Sit down, strap
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Unlike some 300 in Haiti and some 200 elsewhere so far, we have survived another week. It grieves me to the core that the beautiful Haitian people just can't catch a break--and so many of their ills are our fault.
*sigh*
Hurricane Matthew has been the second most severe storm to strike Haiti, and the people there will need a lot of help for a long time to get back on their feet.
Please donate what you can to CARE. The link goes straight to the Hurricane Matthew page for Haiti.
Please and thank you, dear ones!
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Poor little Money Boo Boo...
Incompetent celebutante and fat-ass mean girl Donald Trump, freeloader-in-chief-wannabe, has his frilly little XXXXL panties in a wad about Hillary's attack ads.
He's been calling them mean.
Nasty.
Misrepresentations...
But all she's doing is playing back what he actually said!!!!!
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Isn't it ironic that corrupt traitorous Donald Trump thinks he can rake Hillary over the coals for the Obama administration's deal to stop Iran from producing nukes when Donald Trump has his very own Iran deal?
ICYMI, he rented to the Melli Bank of Iran, which funded terrorism, during the embargo! (Excerpts from a Center for Public Integrity article appear under the Headlines below.)
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Matt Drudge and great white grape Rush
They've been telling their Kool-Aid-drinking conspiracy-theory-loving tinfoil-hat-wearing adherents that Hurricane Matthew isn't nearly as serious as duh gubmint says it is, oh no, because duh gubmint is trying to exaggerate the threat of global warming to scare decent god-fearing Americans, oh yes.
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Speaking of global warming, it's merely a matter of life and death. No big whoop. Not an important issue...like MONEY.
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Drudge Award (noun) --
definition: short-bus-special category of Darwin Award reserved for tinfoil-hat Drudge listeners who
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Filthy unattractive pig and woman hater Donald John Trump thinks we should take his private "locker room talk" about women less seriously than his public speech.
I say we should take ass-wipe shit-stain Donald John Trump's private locker room talk about women more seriously than his public speech.
Why?
Because it expresses how Donald Trump really feels about women--unfettered and unfiltered.
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Corrupt bully Donald Trump is very Christian:
he treats women like annoying talking livestock--
exactly the way the Bible says to!
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Democrats need to step it up and guarantee women the power to exercise their Constitutional right to get safe, legal, available abortions no matter what the women-hating Republicans, like Mike Pence and Donald Trump, do.
Make mifepristone over the counter NOW!
And make it mail order so that women won't have to deal with pompous, self-righteous pharmacists sending them away shamed and empty handed.
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Isn't it ironic that Rick Scott (science denier extraordinaire who's now having his ass handed to him by Mother Nature as described by science) fully expects Congress to approve whatever federal emergency funding he needs to deal with Hurricane Matthew?
It's ironic because 31 Republican Senators voted against the relief bill for Super-storm Sandy for northeastern states while voting to approve it for their own states.
Click the link for the list of these Republican hypocrites, and vote the bastards out this November--vote for Hillary, then vote blue all the way down!
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On why I call Donald Trump names...
On most issues, I take the moral high ground rather than stoop to the other guy's level. So why do I call Donald Trump names? - and such names, like Donald GLUTTONOUS UNATTRACTIVE FAT PIG DOG MISS PIGGY OINK OINK WHERE'S MAH TROUGH Trump...which, I hafta admit, is kinda my fave so far (ah, I lurves them all).
Well...there is some method to my madness.
Yes, I'm fucking pissed off at this country right now--I can't believe we've been foisted with this charlatan who wants nothing more than to turn the public treasury into his own private slush fund.
So, yeah, I'm fucking frustrated.
But there's more tuit than that...
I'm also amusing myself.
I'm trying to see if I can bait master baiter Donald the twit Trump into a 3 a.m. twitterstorm against random bloggers!
Wouldn't you just love to see him lose his shit again?
I'll letcha gno if I pull it off.
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My dad is the real genius--not deadbeat dumbass Donald "freeloader" Trump: my dad is the only person in the world who has figured out, unassisted, how to butt-dial me at work
...from a flip phone!
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Don't forget to read Dot Calm's shadow's favorite independent sources of news and information:
Daily Kos
AlterNet
Peas, friends. Take care of yourselves for me. Trust me--you're worth it! And please and thank you for taking care of your elderly friends and rellies, too--especially if you're in the path of Hurricane Matthew. Trust me--they're worth it, too!
- Dot Calm's shadow
Consider the preemptive Blogger phuqued-up phormatting disclaimer to be in effect. Grrr.
-- Dot Calm's shadow
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Vox headlines
As Donald Trump Tweets Insults, Mike Pence Says Hillary Clinton Has An 'Insult-Driven' Campaign
...Republicans have no shame. They just don't. Sad!
Fox News fit an impressive number of offensive Asian stereotypes into 5 minutes
...As the blurb says, confusing China and Japan is still hilarious to some Americans. I'd add, probably the ones who like to wear pillowcases over their heads.
A woman had a baby. Then her hospital charged her $39.35 to hold it.
...Yes, that's absolutely outrageous. The hospital's argument is that the mother had a C-section and thus required a nurse during the skin-to-skin visit with her baby. Somehow, I just have a hard time accepting that they couldn't accommodate the mother's very normal wish to hold her newborn for the first time without making a phuquen profit on it. Srsly.
Most men think sexism is over, so I asked Joss Whedon to read them my thoughts
...Of course men think sexism is over just like whites think that racism is over! Cheez!!!!!
Donald Trump insults women. Mike Pence puts them in danger.
...Friends, this is no laughing matter. Mike Pence has sought and enacted laws that endanger real, living, breathing women's lives to "protect" clots of blood and clumps of cells that, AT BEST, only have POTENTIAL to become real, living, breathing humans. WOMEN DIE because of people like Pence and their misogynist policies. There's nothing pro-life about it. We need to stop letting these women-haters even use that phrase because they ain't pro-life. They're pro-forced birth. Big difference.
The story of Donald Trump's Atlantic City comeback is even worse than his collapse
...Let me remind you how corrupt incompetent celebutante-in-thief Donald Trump runs his businesses: he makes really bad deals to obtain them, runs them into the ground by milking them to enrich himself, cashes out by turning his private debts into public and private debts for investors and stock-holders while paying himself millions, goes bankrupt anyway, mismanages everything in sight, and screams at people who try to stop him from nuking everything he can get his stumpy orange cocktail-weenie fingers on. Got it?
Trump's reaction to the tax bombshell is worse than the story itself
Donald Trump is toying with refusing to concede if he loses. That's horrifying.
...Maybe, WHEN he loses, they should just taser him until he concedes. Or torture him, since he values torture as an objective moral good--which makes him as just as godly and good of a Christian as my torture-lurving Tea Party Christian friend.
Think sexism against Hillary Clinton is bad? Wait until she wins.
...Sorry, but that is one sad-ass argument. We have to start somewhere! Hillary is better qualified than the vast majority of men who've ever held the post. It's time to put on our big-kid pants and start normalizing the idea of Madame President--for realz, not just on TV.
Matt Drudge's latest conspiracy theory is not just stupid — it's dangerous
...Drudge is claiming that "liberal" weather announcers are exaggerating the severity of hurricane Matthew to generate public acceptance of global warming. The sad irony? Virtually no weather announcers ever mention global warming with respect to hurricanes, even though global warming is clearly driving the higher ocean temperatures that clearly drive the increasingly severe storms that are now the new normal. Drudge may well end up with blood on his hands for this--if he convinces Floridians to ignore global warming denier Rick Scott's dire warnings to evacuate, and if those Floridians die as a result, it will be Matt Drudge's fault. And he should go to prison for that!
Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity's feud over Donald Trump, explained
...She's trying to rebrand herself as not-quite-hateful-FOX-News because she wants to break into mainstream media, and he's trying to solidify his branding as even-more-right-wing-than-hateful-FOX-News because he wants to star on TrumpTV after his boi loses the election.
How living in Canada made me see the cruelty of the American maternity leave system
...Dot Calm's older daughter tried to get away with only taking four weeks when her first was born. She did a number on herself by skimping on rest and recuperation, making it harder both to do her job and to mother her new baby. She learned her lesson and took six weeks--the maximum her federal agency allowed--when her second was born, so her recovery was easier that time. And she was lucky as hell to have four weeks the first time and six weeks the second--most Americans don't. Now imagine being able to take 9 months or a year off to bond with your new baby, get your health and your sleep back on track....
A modest proposal to replace Trump with Pence — with or without Trump's consent
....I don't think that celebutante Donald Trump would ever in a million years consent to The Flip--his ego is just way too overbearing to accept playing second fiddle to anyone, let alone a piece of cardboard like Pence, no matter how they spin it. And if by some miracle The Flip were to happen, and Pence-Trump were to win...! Friends, that is the stuff that nightmares are made of. And we'd start by kissing women's, LGBTQ+, Black and brown, Muslim, veterans' and everyone else's rights goodbye!!! Women would have to go on strike just like they did in Poland to stop the ban on all abortions. "Hey, Honey--are you a Republican? Yes? ...No nookie for you--go fuck yourself!"
Elections, storms, and campaigns: none have changed public opinion on climate change
...What's the deal here--have we as a species lost our will to live?!??
The UN Syria envoy just offered to personally escort rebels out of Aleppo to save the city
...And while we here in America shit ourselves in fear and frustration about the political clown show that is Donald Trump, people in Syria are being bombed to smithereens. Russia and Syria both are deliberately bombing hospitals for Pete's sake! And Gary Johnson is blissfully unaware of it all. I wonder what it's like to live like that--not having a brain, I mean.
"Grab 'em by the pussy”: how Trump talked about women in private is horrifying.
...I wonder how my Tea Party Christian friend would defend his boi Trumpty Dumpty. Personally, I think "grab 'em by the pussy" has a nice ring to it...someone oughtta make it into a jokey joke music video. Kinda like "Boogie in Your Butt"!
A map of the most powerful hurricanes in the US since 1950
...Ugh. And we've only just begun.
The US just formally accused Russia of interfering in the presidential election
...ErmagerdErmagerdErmagerd!!!!! What exactly will O'Bama do about it? - I wonder! The article says that the revelation makes Donald "Putin's bitch" Trump look bad for praising Putin and denying Russian involvement...but none of his Kool-Aid-drinking, conspiracy-theory-loving, tinfoil-hat-wearing supporters will even notice...or give a shit if they did.
Hillary Clinton's new ad features a missile silo officer asking if Trump can be trusted with nukes
...Because of course it does!
President Obama just signed a "bill of rights" for survivors of sexual assault
...THANKS, OBAMA! REALLY!!!!!
Trump wanted the Central Park Five executed. DNA tests proved their innocence. He's not backing down.
...So Donald Trump doesn't just want to be the freeloader in chief--he wants to be the murderer in chief, too.
We've been totally wrong about Hillary Clinton's young voter problem
...In other words, just because she isn't as popular as Obama with young voters doesn't mean she's not popular at all with young voters.
Donald Trump did a practice town hall last night. It didn't go well.
The 2016 Nobel Peace Prize winner just presided over a failed peace referendum
...Some aspects of the peace prize are a joke. Like giving it to Monster Teresa...or to Obama who then went on to kill countless civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere using drones. But the situation in Colombia isn't a joke, and neither was the peace referendum or Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos's efforts. I can understand why the referendum failed: FARC committed war crimes and atrocities for 50 years, and people want to see them held accountable and punished. All parties seem dedicated to renegotiating the peace deal, so fingers crossed that the rebels are ready to take at least some of their medicine.
We don't treat Kim Kardashian like a person. Her robbery exposed that.
...I was visiting my dad in the health facility (he's doing fine and is due home next weekend) when this story broke on the evening news. I remarked to my dad that Kim is damned lucky to be alive--she was lucky the thieves didn't shoot her. We discussed how this might harm her psychologically--making her afraid to travel, for example. We posited that she may have a hard time sleeping for some time to come, and we were relieved when we heard that Kanye dropped what he was doing (performing in concert, which means refunding ticket prices) and raced to be by her side--now that's love. My dad and I then hoped that the jewelry is insured. We discussed how awful it is to lose sentimental treasures, hoping that, if the jewelry isn't recovered, Kim and Kanye could find a silver lining to this terrifying ordeal by going out together to shop for replacements they both love. ...And then, I read this Vox article. I was shocked and dismayed at all the victim shaming--news flash: the victim is not the one committing the crime! And I was dismayed at the fact that Kim's very public life has turned her into a brand rather than a living, breathing, loving, vulnerable, laughing, hurting, multi-faceted real person as far as the public is concerned. Sad.
I almost refused to evacuate before Hurricane Matthew. Here's why I changed my mind.
...Very interesting! I saw another article on Vox this week that disappeared before I could post it: its message was not to be too quick to judge those who do not evacuate during hurricanes. Some people don't have the money; some are elderly and don't have the help they need (or cognitive function); many just don't have access to transportation or a safe place to go; some don't want to abandon their pets; and some see leaving as the most selfish thing they can do--if they go, who will help the friends and families they leave behind?
Here's a funny from BuzzFeed!
This Guy's Imaginary Trump Conversations Are The Funniest Thing On Twitter
...Yup, they're that good! Hope he keeps 'em coming!!
From The Center for Public Integrity, PublicIntegrity.org--Trump may have violated the embargo on Iran by renting to Bank Melli, which had terrorist ties
Friends, I've been seeing whiffs of this story floating around teh Intert00bs this week and decided to hunt it down--not only as yet another example of incompetent celebutante Donald Trump's rampant corruption but also as an example of his projection...Pot, meet Kettle. Wowzers. The article is quite long, so I'm just posting some excerpts. Don't be afraid to click through to the original article--the website is friendly. It-snot slow or bogged down with ads; nor does it yap at you. Wish they were all like that!
-- Dot Calm's shadow
GOP nominee has slammed Clinton for cutting ‘deals with our foreign adversaries’
By Sasha Chavkin, Michael Hudson, Dave Levinthal
6:00 am, October 3, 2016 Updated: 4:52 pm, October 3, 2016
Donald Trump’s real estate organization rented New York office space from 1998 to 2003 to an Iranian bank that U.S. authorities have linked to terrorist groups and Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump inherited Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-controlled banks, as a tenant when he purchased the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, according to public records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Center for Public Integrity. The Trump Organization kept the bank on as a tenant for four more years after the U.S. Treasury Department designated Bank Melli in 1999 as being controlled by the Iranian government.
U.S. officials later alleged that Bank Melli had been used to obtain sensitive materials for Iran’s nuclear program. U.S. authorities also alleged that the bank had been used between 2002 and 2006 to funnel money to a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that has sponsored terrorist attacks — a period that overlapped with the time the bank rented office space from Trump.
The Trump Organization’s dealings with the Iranian bank shed more light on Trump’s wide-ranging business interests, which sometimes stand at odds with his blunt declarations on the campaign trail. Trump has denounced Iran as a “big enemy,” blasted Hillary Clinton for not taking a harder line against the Iranian regime and charged that donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation amounted to evidence of corruption. His five-year stint as Bank Melli’s landlord provides an example of the Trump Organization itself doing business with a government hostile to the United States.
“It’s a pretty hypocritical position to take,” said Richard Nephew, who served from 2013 to 2015 as principal deputy coordinator of sanctions policy at the U.S. State Department and spent nearly a decade working on Iran sanctions in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “It suggests that his principles are pretty flexible when it comes to him getting paid.”
A court document obtained by ICIJ indicates that Bank Melli’s rent on more than 8,000 square feet on the GM Building’s 44th floor may have topped half a million dollars a year.
...
Bank Melli’s office in the GM Building was listed by the Treasury Department among financial institutions “owned or controlled” by the Iranian government and subject to U.S. economic sanctions, according to the Code of Federal Regulations from the years 1999 through 2003. Trump owned the GM Building from July 1998 until September 2003, New York City property records show.
Under U.S. sanctions rules, Bank Melli was forbidden from conducting banking transactions within the U.S., but the bank may have maintained its New York offices in the hope that the U.S. government would someday ease sanctions against Iranian businesses.
The bank moved out of the GM Building sometime after 2003. A spokesperson for Boston Properties, Inc., which is currently the building’s majority owner, said Bank Melli was not a tenant when Boston
Properties and other partners bought the building in 2008.
Bank’s ties to terror
U.S. sanctions against Iran date back to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when Islamic fundamentalists seized power and held more than 50 Americans hostage for more than a year. After briefly lifting restrictions when the hostages were released, President Ronald Reagan designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and imposed new sanctions in 1984 and 1987.
At the time, Donald Trump called for the U.S. take a tougher line against the Iranian regime.
In 1987, he suggested in a speech in New Hampshire that the U.S. should attack Iran and seize some of its oil fields to hit back for what he described as Iran’s bullying of America.
“I’d be harsh on Iran. They've been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools,” Trump told The Guardian in 1988. “It’d be good for the world to take them on.”
In the years that followed, Iran stepped up its support for international terrorist attacks, according to authorities in the U.S. and other Western nations.
In 1994, a suicide bomber killed 85 people at a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, an attack that Argentine prosecutors later charged was coordinated by the Iranian government.
In 1996, a truck bomb killed 19 American servicemen at the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Saudi Arabia. A U.S. court later held that the bombing had been “planned, funded, and sponsored by senior leadership in the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
As Iran supported terror attacks abroad, the U.S. moved to punish the regime economically. President Bill Clinton approved a sweeping embargo in 1995 that banned Americans from conducting trade with Iranian businesses.
Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-owned banks, had long had an office in the GM Building in midtown Manhattan. In 1998, Trump’s real estate organization bought the building and inherited Bank Melli as a tenant.
It is not clear if Trump knew personally that Bank Melli was renting an office from his company, but he was the Trump Organization’s chairman and president, and has described himself as a hands-on manager who pays attention to details.
Nephew, who worked on sanctions and nuclear nonproliferation issues for the U.S. government from 2003 to 2015, said there was less awareness in the 1990s about Iran’s nuclear program and the role of banks in financing terrorism. But he said that accepting payments from Bank Melli should have raised a red flag, even in 1998.
“Should someone in America have known better than to do business with Iran? Yeah,” Nephew said.
...
Emanuele Ottolenghi, an expert on Iran at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said that it was “remarkable” that the Trump Organization had kept Bank Melli as a tenant for four years after the Treasury Department had listed the bank as an Iran-controlled entity.
“I just don’t think that a company of that size and means should be able to hide behind a ‘we didn’t know’ kind of argument,” Ottolenghi said.
In 2007, U.S. authorities charged that Bank Melli had facilitated purchases for Iran’s nuclear program, and that it had been used to send at least $100 million to the Quds Force, the feared special operations unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
The Quds Force was designated as a supporter of terrorism by President George W. Bush weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for providing support to the Taliban, Hamas and Hezbollah, groups that the U.S. has labeled as terrorist organizations.
Bank Melli played an important role in Iran’s nuclear program and support for international terrorism in the years before it was singled out by Treasury in 2007, experts told ICIJ.
“It was allowing the entities that were shopping for the regime to make payments,” said Ottolenghi, who described Bank Melli as “critical” to Iran’s past nuclear and terrorist activities.
A representative for Glodow Nead Communications, a public relations firm representing the Trump Organization, told an ICIJ reporter that the Trump Organization would only comment if the story was positive. She declined as a matter of policy to provide contact information for any of its employees.
The Trump Organization continued renting office space to Bank Melli until the insurance company Conseco, which had provided financing for the 1998 purchase, took control of the GM Building in 2003 and sold it to the Macklowe Organization, a New York City real estate developer.
...
Last week, during the first of three face-to-face debates with Clinton, Trump panned the United States’ 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, calling it “one of the worst deals ever made by any country in history.”
In June, a statement by the Trump campaign blasted Clinton for her work in support of the Iran nuclear deal after the airline Iran Air struck an agreement to purchase aircraft from Boeing, a company that has contributed to the Clinton Foundation.
“This is another example of Clinton’s pay-to-play governing style,” the Trump campaign said. “She will cut deals with our foreign adversaries as long as they are willing to line her pockets.”
At the same time, news reports published in the course of the presidential campaign have shown that the Trump Organization has been entangled with a number of foreign governments that are hostile to the United States.
Trump tried to raise money for the Trump Organization from the regime of Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator who provided support for the 1988 Pan Am flight bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 189 Americans, Buzzfeed News reported in June.
A company owned by Trump violated the embargo against Cuba with a business trip to the island in 1998, shortly before he gave a speech in Miami expressing his support for the embargo, Newsweek reported in September. In addition, Bloomberg News has reported that Trump Organization executives may have also violated the Cuban embargo by scouting out a possible investment in a golf course near Havana in late 2012 or early 2013. The deal ultimately fell through, according to the report.
The Trump Organization has also made millions selling apartments to the government of Saudi Arabia, the New York Daily News reported in September. The Saudi government is formally a U.S. ally but is suspected of supporting militant Islamic groups, and Trump has called on the Clinton Foundation to return Saudi donations because of the government’s poor human rights record.
Other Trump Organization entanglements in India, Russia and Dubai create conflicts of interest that could threaten American national security if Trump becomes president, Newsweek reported in September.
Information on all of these ventures is limited because Trump has not released his tax returns. He is poised to become the first major party candidate not to do so by Election Day since Richard Nixon in 1972.
Trump pledged on Sept. 15 that he would “absolutely sever” his connections with the Trump Organization if he is elected president. “I will sever connections, and I’ll have my children and my executives run the company and I won’t discuss it with them,” he said on the television program "Fox and Friends."
---
Sasha Chavkin is a staff writer and Michael Hudson is a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Dave Levinthal is senior political reporter at the Center for Public Integrity.
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Bonus from The Center for Public Integrity, PublicIntegrity.org--Trump accepted illegal contribution from "proud Muslim" in Canada
Campaign in process of refunding foreigner’s contribution, spokeswoman says
By Michael Beckel
5:00 am, September 12, 2016 Updated: 9:57 am, September 13, 2016
Donald Trump hasn’t been shy about voicing hostility toward foreigners.
Campaign in process of refunding foreigner’s contribution, spokeswoman says
By Michael Beckel
5:00 am, September 12, 2016 Updated: 9:57 am, September 13, 2016
Donald Trump hasn’t been shy about voicing hostility toward foreigners.
And he's been equally un-shy about soliciting illegal contributions from them, despite being told to cease and desist. Like when he tried to hit up dignitaries in the UK, Australia, and Iceland for illegal campaign donations this June. Why isn't criminal corrupt celebutante-in-thief Donald John Trump in jail yet?!??
-- Dot Calm's shadow
The Republican presidential nominee has proposed banning Muslim immigrants to the United States. He’s asserted that “a lot” of refugees fleeing Middle Eastern violence are members of the terrorist organization ISIS. And in a bid to curb illegal immigration and keep out drug dealers and “rapists,” he's called for a “big, beautiful” wall to be built on the U.S.-Mexico border.
And yet the Center for Public Integrity has determined that Trump’s presidential campaign, earlier this year, accepted an illegal contribution from a Canadian Muslim with a soft spot for Syrian refugees.
Foreigners are generally prohibited from making political contributions, and in response to questions from the Center for Public Integrity, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said the campaign is now refunding $225 to Shahriyar Nasir of Toronto, who may be among Trump’s least likely contributors.
Nasir is a millennial who works as a software engineer. On Twitter, he describes himself as a “proud Muslim,” and he’s been involved with an interfaith group that helps refugees from war-ravaged Syria settle in Canada.
Did Nasir have a conversion experience this year that led him to support Trump?
Far from it.
Here’s how his ill-fated Trump donation came to be: one of Nasir’s friends wanted to exercise more, so they made a bet. For each day the friend skipped a workout, he’d be required to donate to an “anti-charity,” which, in this case, was Trump.
When the moment of truth came in April, Nasir’s friend had missed enough days to owe 300 Canadian dollars. At the time, the friends calculated that amount equaled $225.
A few keystrokes later, though, Nasir was the one joining the ranks of thousands of Americans who have donated to Trump’s campaign. That’s because his friend used Nasir’s credit card to make the online donation — with the intent of paying Nasir back.
“I wanted him to feel the pain of having lost his bet,” Nasir told the Center for Public Integrity. “The donation that you discovered was made with the intent of helping my friend learn a powerful life lesson. Not with the intent of any kind of publicity or actually supporting Trump.”
The friends documented the learning experience in a video that was, until recently, posted publicly on YouTube. (It’s now private.)
During one moment of levity in the video, Nasir’s friend points to his right bicep and says: “The lack of guns here is a testament to how great your wall is going to be.”
"I wanted [my friend] to feel the pain
of having lost his bet."
of having lost his bet."
-- Shahriyar Nasir of Toronto
Notably, Nasir and his friend may have never intended to financially support Trump’s presidential campaign.
Throughout the video, the young men repeatedly refer to donating to Trump’s “foundation.”
Trump does operate a charitable foundation, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which is a separate legal entity from his campaign.
But they didn’t send the money to Trump’s foundation, which itself has been embroiled in controversy surrounding an illegal gift it made three years ago to a political group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Nasir’s money instead went to Trump’s campaign, which, unlike the foundation, is prohibited from accepting money from foreign nationals unless they hold a green card, which Nasir does not.
“We didn’t pay close attention to the details of the transaction,” Nasir acknowledged to the Center for Public Integrity. “We inadvertently made the contribution to the political campaign and not the charitable foundation.”
Only U.S. citizens and immigrants with permanent resident status may lawfully contribute to federal political candidates.
To be safe, political campaigns should pay extra attention to contributions received from people living outside the United States, said Ken Gross, who heads the political law practice at the firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Washington, D.C.
“Typically, a campaign or PAC will take steps to affirm that the donor is a U.S. citizen or green card holder,” Gross said.
Neither Hicks, Trump’s spokeswoman, nor Don McGahn, Trump’s campaign lawyer and a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, responded to questions about how the campaign vets contributions from foreign addresses.
(Update, Sept. 13, 2016, 9:58 a.m.: In a letter to the FEC filed Monday night, Trump campaign treasurer Timothy Jost stressed that the campaign has "safeguards in place to ensure that all contributions are made by permissible individuals only." Among the measures reportedly being taken: requesting copies of valid U.S. passports for donors giving foreign addresses. The Trump campaign, Jost continued, "rejects contributions from contributors whose status cannot be confirmed with a passport.")
Paul S. Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit campaign finance reform advocacy group, said that while this “light-hearted fun between buddies” was not “particularly troubling,” it was still a violation of the law prohibiting contributions from foreign nationals.
“You cannot undo a violation of federal law by getting a refund or seeking a refund of your contribution once you’re caught,” Ryan continued. “The question is whether it’s a significant enough violation that the FEC would care.”
FEC spokeswoman Judy Ingram declined to comment on the specifics of this case.
The agency typically sends letters to campaigns asking for additional information when it notices contributions that appear to be impermissible.
The FEC did just that in August, flagging Trump campaign contributions from three individuals with foreign addresses. But Nasir was not among them.
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In chess, the queen is the only piece that can move any way, any number of spaces. Them’s the rules.
But imagine you’re playing chess with someone who doesn’t care about the rules. They play every piece like the queen. Doesn’t matter how good you are at chess -- you’ll lose every time. That’s a little like what China is doing to the American steel industry. China routinely ignores international trade obligations. China helped cause the global drop of steel prices when it unfairly subsidized their steel sector. China remains the main source of excess capacity in the steel industry, making the problem worse. Bottom line: China’s cheating. And Minnesota’s Iron Rangers are getting hit hard. Given a level playing field, American steel producers and manufacturers can compete with the best in the world. We need to hold them accountable. I’m working with a bipartisan group in the Senate, urging the President to take action against China’s cheating. Today I’d like to give you the chance to add your voice. Sign our Open Letter to President Obama >> Minnesota’s steelworkers and manufacturers have been through a lot. We lost thousands of jobs in the Northland when an influx of illegally priced steel, much of which came from China, flooded the market. We’re recovering, but if we don’t level the playing field that won’t last long. American workers are counting on us to protect their jobs and their livelihoods. Add your name to the open letter and urge the President to take action. Thanks! -Al | ||
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Ruben Kihuen has a new ad out on Cresent Hardy's reckless, feckless attitude toward guns
My opponent Republican Cresent Hardy has even said children with severe mental illness should “absolutely” have access to guns.
I could really use your support on this issue.
If you've saved your information with ActBlue Express, your donation to Democrat Ruben Kihuen will go through immediately:
- Ruben
Paid for by Ruben Kihuen for Congress
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Donald Trump has evaded paying federal income tax for 18 years -- and he’s proud of it!
The very same man who scapegoats undocumented immigrants and working-class families as “freeloaders” for not paying their fair share pays even less than they do!
The very same man who scapegoats undocumented immigrants and working-class families as “freeloaders” for not paying their fair share pays even less than they do!
The sheer hypocrisy is MIND-NUMBING!
Trump wants to run the very government he scammed for nearly 2 decades. And according to the polls, his supporters don’t seem to care!
Do you? Take our brief survey immediately:
Trump wants to run the very government he scammed for nearly 2 decades. And according to the polls, his supporters don’t seem to care!
Do you? Take our brief survey immediately:
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From the Daily Kos Liberation League--GOTV and help motivate key voters from the comfort of your home!
The outcome of this election will determine the course of elections and movements. Will we have a President we can work with to correct injustices or will we have someone who thrives on division? The choice is ours and it is clear––We need allies in power we can work with towards justice.
This is why Daily Kos is partnering with Color of Change PAC to help get out the Black vote with an upcoming text-a-thon. We have a momentous opportunity to elect leaders who have stated their desire to address the injustices plaguing Black and Brown communities.
We can make real change on overcriminalization, police misconduct, state violence, poverty, education, and mass incarceration with this election.
Sign up to attend a training shift and text-a-thon to reach Black voters around the country. You can sign up, log in, and text from the comfort of your home, while discussing the issues that matter most to Black voters. Click here to sign up.
Join Daily Kos and Color of Change on Saturday, October 8, at 12 pm est for training. (If you can't make Saturday, there are 10 other options available.) Then, after training we will ask you to commit to a text shift where you will be texting Black voters in key areas around the country.
These are areas where people are voting not only for the President, but for key Senate races, prosecutorial races––like where I live in Cincinnati, OH, and important state level races.
Black and Brown voters have a lot to gain or lose in this election. And White people need to show up to support them. Everyone can join this text-a-thon––we're all in this together––and we're going to talk to Black voters about what matters most in their communities.
Join Daily Kos and Color of Change on Saturday, October 8 at 12:00pm est (or another shift listed here) for the virtual text-a-thon to connect with thousands of Black voters around the country.
If you can't donate your time, please chip in $3 to support our get out the vote efforts.
Keep fighting,
Rachel Colyer, Daily Kos
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More and more Americans are co-signing big student loans to help their kids get a college degree.
But if those young graduates can’t find a job, the federal government can garnish Social Security benefits earned by the co-signing family members.
That's just unfair -- effectively punishing those who invest in the next generation. Ruben and some of his colleagues are working to end it but need your help.
But if those young graduates can’t find a job, the federal government can garnish Social Security benefits earned by the co-signing family members.
That's just unfair -- effectively punishing those who invest in the next generation. Ruben and some of his colleagues are working to end it but need your help.
Thank you!
-- GallegoforArizona.com
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Friends, read this and be afraid! Something is rotten in Israel!!!
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Zaytouna-Oliva Taken in International Waters: Whereabouts of Participants Unknown
Click image above to view video
This afternoon, the Women's Boat to Gaza was making good progress to the shores and the women were emotional about meeting all the people in Gaza who were waiting for them. Some of the Palestinians had spent the night at the beach to greet them. At 9:58 (EST) organizers lost total contact with the Zaytouna-Oliva. The US embassy confirmed that the boat was intercepted. We do not know where our friends are. It is important to know that this happened in international waters and it is not only illegal but sets a bad precedent in giving a greenlight for other nations to attack civilian ships in international waters. The Zaytouna-Oliva was carrying no material aid. This was by design because Israel, as a premise for their attacks, would claim that weapons and contraband were on board. The owner of Zaytouna-Oliva is Israeli. Ann Wright is a decorated former US diplomat, a member of Veterans For Peace and on our Advisory Board. On board with her were three parliamentarians, an Olympic athlete and Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Maguire. They were committed to nonviolence as much as they were committed to breaking the blockade. Ann has traveled thousands of miles and made a great sacrifice for human rights. We can help her with a few small efforts:
Contact President Barack Obama: (202) 456-1111
Unlike
other nations that have women on the boat, we Americans provide
military equipment to Israel that may very well have been used against
Ann and our international friends. Please ask Secretary Kerry and
President Obama to demand Israel immediately release the women and that
they do an investigation on the incident as there are a number of
troubling circumstances that are against US and international law. And
don't forget to say that the blockade on Gaza must end.Contact Secretary John Kerry's Chief of Staff: FinerJJ@state.gov |
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Veterans For Peace appreciates your generous donations.
We also encourage you to join our ranks.
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On September 9, 2016, prisoners across the country marked the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising by launching a nationwide labor strike calling for the end of legalized slavery in America's prisons.
Inmate labor is mandatory. It is also paid at insultingly low wages, as low as 8 cents per hour. Up to 80 percent of these meager earnings is lost to exorbitant taxes and deductions. And some states including Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas do not pay at all for mandated labor.
Sign the petition: Stand with prison strikers and demand an end to legalized slavery.
Being incarcerated should not nullify a person's rights and protections under the law. Yet the 13th Amendment - which abolishes slavery - makes an exception for those convicted of crimes.
Prisoners are not considered employees, so they are not protected by fair labor regulations. They have no legal avenue through which to seek better wages or safe working conditions. Prisons are known to intentionally hide conditions which threaten the safety of inmates, but nothing is being done to fix it.
Incarcerated people are grossly exploited. Their forced and nearly free labor is used to bolster the profits of top-dollar companies like McDonald's and Wal-Mart, all while they are denied basic rights as workers.
This is a travesty. Being convicted of a crime should not equal an automatic forfeiture of one's body and human rights.
Sign the petition: Stand with prison strikers and demand an end to legalized slavery.
Keep fighting,
Irna Landrum, Daily Kos
P.S. Please help keep Daily Kos strong by chipping in $3.
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Movies!
Some ugly irony: my Tea Party Christian friend thinks Catholics aren't Christian but defends Monster Teresa tooth and nail. Superstition makes strange bedfellows. I've posted articles fairly recently on Monster Teresa on this blawg. I used to admire her until I learned who and what she really was.
Keith Olbermann on 50 (as in, just a light sampling) of incompetent Donald Trump's pitiful excuses. Only a spoiled, immature weenie like incompetent celebutante Donald Trump can't take responsibility for his own actions. Sad!
Bonus from Keith! Dot Calm absolutely luuuuuurved him...and so do I. If you watch nothing else this entire weekend, WATCH THIS VIDEO. The Truth has Power!
Have another Keith! This one's about Donald's flip-flopping on supporting Hillary if she wins or refusing to concede. It's the most un-American thing any candidate has ever done in this nation's history. And not only is incompetent bullying orange celebutante-in-thief Donald Trump un-American, but so are his supporters. You know the ones--they think the secessionist confederate flag is patriotic because, you know, God said it was an objective moral good for them to own Black people as chattel property. Let's put that in our basket of deplorables, shall we? Looks like we're gonna need a bigger basket....
Ivanka shows she's no more adult and no less spoiled than her daddy, Donsie Wonsie--when Cosmo, of all mags, asked her some very reasonable and not very hostile questions, Ivanka got pissy and stormed out. Kudos to Cosmo for having actual journalists on staff--that already puts them ahead of FUX Noise and most of mainstream commercial media.
Here's Randi Rhodes on the first debate--pure fun...until you get to the issues. Like Dot Calm, Randi sees how consistent Hillary has been in fighting for children, women, and families and how consistently she's been hated by the right.
Now that we've reviewed the last debate, here's Keith again to tell us how incompetent celebutante and freeloader-in-thief-wannabe Donald Trump plans to win Sunday's debate
Well, well! Rafael CAPITULATed Cruz phone banking for Money Boo Boo? Cenk says it's the saddest video you'll ever see. Tea Party Christian Republican tears...SOOOOOOO yummy!!!!!
Bonus TYT: Mike Pence on Morning Joe...a segment totally full of Pence's lies and totally avoiding Pence's seething, vicious, vitriolic hated of women and his feckless, flippant denial of science--such as cigarette-related deaths, on which Pence, as usual, totally lied (2/3 of smokers die from smoking--not 1/3, like Pence claims). This is why I don't trust MSNBC. Mike Pence wants women to have funerals for their used tampons and pads, and he wants moar moar moar Zika babies, stillborn babies, dead babies, and dead women who were forced to give birth against their will and even when their health is in danger. Like all Christians, Mike Pence wants to legislatively suppress people's ability to be who they are--including pushing to defund honest-to-goodness HIV-AIDS care from Ryan White Care in favor of funding psychological torture that denies who people are. Is Mike Pence really the man you want one heartbeat away from the presidency?
But wait, there's moar--the one group Donald Trump forgot to offend: the dying
Oh, fuck--I fucking love Trae Crowder!!!!! He defends Dixie so capably--prejudice against poor white uneducated southerners is still prejudice. I LURVE him!! Preach it, atheist brother--give 'em hell even tho we don't believe in that superstitious shit!
ICYMI on tee-vee, here's the SNL "debate": Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) and Hillary Clinton (Kate McKinnon) face off in the first presidential debate, moderated by Lester Holt (Michael Che). Deliciously kick-the-bed funny writing and incredible, impeccable acting--especially from Alec "who knew he could do that with his lips?" Baldwin. The lovely Kate is great, too. Just amazing!
'Til next time, check out these great channels:
...or, if you just want something mindless and fun, try Tested
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It's Fireball time!!!
*hic*
posted by Dot Calm @ 10:12 PM
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