TRUMP is seriously dangerous

[seemslikeadream]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11T_-k7ckrg

[PufPuf93]

Kayfabe thread (five years ago!!! aaaaaa)

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=32175

I learned a new term and may not have been reading RI (or the internet in general at the time of that post).

Made a comment in the other thread as seems worthy of a kick.

[PufPuf93]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11T_-k7ckrg

I recall Kaufman wrestling women but recall nothing of Lawler or of this appearance on Lettermen.

After watching the video (and talk on RI about kayfabe), my impression was that the interaction was staged.

I looked up Lawler on wiki (as I am prone to do because of the lazy) and look what I found:

"In 1982, Lawler began a notorious feud with comedian Andy Kaufman.[1] At the time, Kaufman wrestled women as part of his skits and had declared himself the Intergender Heavyweight Champion.[1] On April 5, Lawler, who had taken exception to the skits, wrestled Kaufman in Memphis.[1] During the course of the match, Lawler delivered two piledrivers to his opponent, sending him to the hospital.[1] On July 29, Lawler slapped Kaufman in the face on an episode of Late Night with David Letterman.[1][5] Kaufman responded by throwing his coffee on Lawler.[1]

Years later, Lawler appeared as himself in the Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon; the movie revealed that Lawler's feud with Kaufman had been kayfabe (staged). Lawler later claimed that not only was his entire feud with Kaufman staged, but the two were actually very good friends."

[82_28]

But believable in that day and age. Nobody could rush over to their social media connections and say did you see what I just saw #kaufmanvslawler? So everyone went to bed that night thinking it was funny but completely real. I guess. I was just a baby then. I remember when Taxi came on because I had to be in bed. But always loved the theme song that came through the door.

It's sorta funny that this went down the same year PKD died after a career writing about how fake reality was. Not funny but he was kinda prophesying exactly just this.

[Sounder]

Michael Moore is a bright fellow, which tells me he either suffers from willful/arrogant blindness or he's another complicit stooge.

Yes, TRUMP and all his egregious flaws are there for anyone with eyes to see. We have myriad exhibits within this thread that speak to his character as a human/presidential candidate. But as demonstrated here and on other threads, the candidate on the (illusory) "other side of the aisle" offers little, if any, relief. The public LOSES with either option (lesser is some ways with one, more in other ways with the other, and vice-versa).

Neither are acceptable options worth clamoring for in any interpretation of reality (unless the clamoring are calls for indictments...).

In short:

F 'em BOTH, and F#CK anyone that claims otherwise.

Thanks Belligerent Savant, Yours is a very balanced approach.

[Nordic]

Trump is the low hanging fruit obscuring the rotten castle beyond.

It's just too easy. He's a feint. Everybody gangs up on Trump, an angry mob who forgot to lock their doors or guard the bank.

While we're all gnashing our teeth about Trump and running him out of town on a rail, the houses are robbed, the banks are stripped of our savings. Any babies left at home disappear. The wells are poisoned.

But at least we got rid of Trump.

[PufPuf93]

Recall Fall 2008 and the financial crisis?

I expect a Fall 2016 crisis.

What could it be?

[Nordic]

Recall Fall 2008 and the financial crisis?

I expect a Fall 2016 crisis.

What could it be?

Deutsche Bank from what I've been hearing.

Or war with Russia in Ukraine. Or both!

[The Consul]

If I were advisor to Trump I'd tell him to drop The Stones (who hate him, personaly) & the fucked up choice of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and replace it with some Pussy Riot anti-Putin ballads. Crush the Russian suck up meme, right? Also include performance art by Voina where instead of having Mickey Mouse & Lennin portrayed as Jesus it could be Mr. Burns & a loin clothed Clinton in full convulsions on a cross made of the biggest T from the biggest of the really big yuge Trump properties(which begs the question is America ready for a female Jesus?). Her breasts would be bruised dangling & withered and Crack Pipe Donny could bellow "I told you she was a mess - come on now, be honest, whose figure would you rather see in the White House hers.." he points at Hillary grabbing his own throat his tongue hanging out ...."or HERS!" His latest wife comes sliding down a diamond studded stripper pole to land on the stage gyrating like a starving actress in a shitty TV detective show. At which point heroin anal suppository Trump raises his fist in the air screaming wildly "Come on, baby show us your tits!". While Melania works the high donor crowd for 7 figure g-string donations various parts of Crooked Hillary's body slide off the crucifix to make crispy plops on the stage. "What did I tell you. No blood. Not human. A mess!" Trump could then wax poetic how Burns is a personal friend who once told Donald he'd be a doorman in five frames of a kids diaper commercial if he never read Art of the Deal. Seriously folks think about it. Game changer. He'd in no time be Charlie Sheen winning for real - who he can promise will be Minister of Health & Celebrity and thereby get a cut from Charlie's new condom pitchman gig. It would be big. Huge. Fabulous. Total game changer. But seriously you want to know what Trump presidency would be like look no further than Yanukovich. Same taste in furniture. In no time Whitey House would be running smooth as an Albanian mafia whore house. And double serious yes war with Iran. You think we're giving Israel the biggest military aid package in history so they can better defend themselves from knife wielding high school girls? No. Iran is the ONLY place they haven't fucked up yet. Way too tempting. My realest guess is it will be staging ground for BUA (Barely Understandable Armaments). Horrific weapons capable of "clinical precision" which have been laboratory tested to cause 17% fewer child mutilations than Hell fire missiles & a quicker more efficient kill chain. A pentagonal win-win situation. I can't stand thinking about it anymore so I'm going to the mountains the falls in the echo of what Kerouac said "I don't know I don't care and it doesn't make any difference." Sad.

[SonicG]

If I were advisor to Trump... In no time Whitey House would be running smooth as an Albanian mafia whore house... in the echo of what Kerouac said "I don't know I don't care and it doesn't make any difference." Sad.

Imma going to go meditate with some camparis and sodas...

[seemslikeadream]

Trump’s money mystery: Trump is definitely hiding something, but the question is what
Are we going to find deep ties to Russia in those long-awaited tax returns?
MICHAEL WINSHIP, BILLMOYERS.COM

This piece originally appeared on BillMoyers.com.

First things first, Donald Trump: Release. Your. Tax. Returns.

No excuses.

Second, if we have to have a cartoon character running for president, I would prefer Bart Simpson. He has better writers and a healthier sense of self-awareness.

Like Donald Trump, Bart clings to a life’s philosophy best summed up as, “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it, unless it’s something good, in which case I did do it, even if I didn’t do it.”

That said, while Bart rarely can discern right from wrong, he frowns on bad organization and a lack of finesse. Of the Trump campaign, he would look askance and dismissively pronounce, as he has of other fiascoes, “This is senseless destruction with none of my usual social commentary.”

Bart also has a finer comprehension than Trump of government and the U.S. Constitution, a document he supports and understands, but about which he forthrightly declares, “I’m pretty sure the Patriot Act killed it to ensure our freedoms.”

But back to those tax returns. According to experts, the old “I’m being audited and can’t release them” argument does not hold water. For the umpteenth time, what is Trump hiding?

Of course, many have speculated for months that his obfuscating is because he has much less money than he claims; some have suggested that the returns would reveal that Trump is a complete chiseler when it comes to contributing to charity.

No, what’s truly disturbing is the prospect of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, each an exemplar of thuggish ultra-nationalism, joining hands and merrily dragging the rest of us down the lane to a kleptocratic, even fascist hell. And in the end, it’s all about the money.
Like others, I believe that what’s in those documents would reveal how deeply in hock Trump is to overseas investors, especially the Russian oligarchs. How could we have a president with hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign debt? How effectively could Trump engage as a leader of the United States when he personally owes other countries’ financiers a fortune? This is almost as frightening as the prospect of Trump waking up in a cranky pants mood and eighty-sixing the planet. Almost.

The relationship among Trump, his advisors and Russia is deeply troubling and not because of Cold War-era paranoia about the Communist threat (although it is fascinating to see how the possible involvement of Russia in this election is both stirring up that nostalgic paranoia while at the same time opening old fissures on the left, as if we were back debating Khrushchev’s 1956 denunciation of Stalin and the cult of personality).

Bad enough that many intelligence and computer experts seem to agree that the recent cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign are the handiwork of hackers in the employ of Russian security services. The long-suspected machinations of several DNC staffers against the Bernie Sanders campaign that were revealed by the hacks, while indeed worthy of condemnation, do not justify the act itself. Nor do the many past acts of interference by the United States in the electoral process of friends and enemies. But as many have noted, we once voted to impeach a president after a break-in at Democratic headquarters; this current breach should be taken no less seriously and is, in many important ways, worse.

You don’t have to be a hawk on these issues or an hysteric on the dangers of Russia — and I’m neither — to be deeply concerned that outside influences could so easily manipulate a potential president.Worrying, too, to see the recent interference, reportedly by Trump staffers, with the Republican Party platform plank calling for the protection of Ukraine’s security against Russia, as well as Trump’s own comments praising Putin and Russia while questioning America’s continuing role as the linchpin member of NATO. Not to mention a campaign manager, Paul Manafort, whose work as a political consultant to former Ukrainian president and Putin pal Viktor Yanukovych is deeply suspect and an advisor, Carter Page, who has ties to Gazprom, the Russian, state-controlled energy giant. In July, Page spoke at Moscow’s New Economic School and said that the chance for better relations with Russia has been diminished because, “Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change.”

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As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo wrote a couple of weeks ago, “Those associations might simply be unsavory if the candidate were an experienced political figure or surrounded by knowledgable advisors. Neither is the case…My own concern is mainly that this kind of mix of ignorance, grifters and disorganization is the kind of seed bed where influence operations and malign influence tend to thrive and take root. We’ve seen more than enough to know this knot of connections requires deep scrutiny, extreme vetting as Trump might say. This is no joke.”

But most important, follow the money. Trump denies that he has any investments in Russia, which as many have pointed out is not for lack of trying, and which essentially raises the question, what have the Russians invested in Trump? “There is a lot of Russian money flowing into Trump’s coffers,” Marshall wrote late last month, “and he is conspicuously solicitous of Russian foreign policy priorities.”

We know that Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets…We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” The Guardian reports there are “several Russian billionaires tied to Trump” and notes Trump’s sale of a Palm Beach mansion for $95 million to Russian fertilizer billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, “who was reported in the Panama Papers leaks to have used offshore law firms to hid more than $2 billion worth of artworks, including pieces by Picasso, Van Gogh and Leonardo, from his wife in advance of their divorce.”

Perhaps most damning is The New York Times’s April account of accusations that arose from the building of Trump SoHo, a hotel and condo tower in downtown Manhattan, “one of several instances in which Mr. Trump’s boastfulness — a hallmark of his career and his campaign — has been accused of crossing the line into fraud.”

Times reporter Mike McIntire wrote that one of the associates at Bayrock, the development company behind the Trump project, “brokered a $50 million investment in Trump SoHo and three other Bayrock projects by an Icelandic firm preferred by wealthy Russians ‘in favor with’ President Vladimir V. Putin, according to a lawsuit against Bayrock by one of its former executives.” Another lawsuit “was filled with unflattering details of how Bayrock operated, including allegations that it had occasionally received unexplained infusions of cash from accounts in Kazakhstan and Russia.”

The aforementioned Josh Marshall has been taking all of this in and covering Trump’s Russia ties with the persistence and eagle eye of a superb investigative reporter. He writes:

“Trump has been blackballed by all major U.S. banks with the exception of Deutschebank, which is of course a foreign bank with a major U.S. presence. He has steadied and rebuilt his financial empire with a heavy reliance on capital from Russia. At a minimum the Trump organization is receiving lots of investment capital from people close to Vladimir Putin.

“…Even if you draw no adverse conclusions, Trump’s financial empire is heavily leveraged and has a deep reliance on capital infusions from oligarchs and other sources of wealth aligned with Putin. That’s simply not something that can be waved off or ignored.”

Yes, the body of evidence, while large, is circumstantial. But where there’s smoke, which makes it all the more imperative that Trump let the press and public see his tax returns so we have a chance at piecing together the truth.

There is no sense in allowing a man with this potentially monstrous amount of foreign debt to be our president, especially when he is someone monumentally indifferent to understanding America’s place in the world, a fool whose entire worldview seems equivalent to that of the blowhard at the local tavern whose total knowledge comes from something he heard from a guy once.

Dump Trump, Republicans, and see if Bart Simpson will give you a tumble.

http://www.salon.com/2016/08/13/trumps- ... r_partner/

[FourthBase]

Is anyone here endorsing Trump? I think Agent Orange Cooper should stop being coy about it. Since his posts are endorsements, it doesn't really matter where he claims his vote/non-vote will go. It's okay, I don't think it's a banning offense. (Or maybe it is, because of the anti-sexism/anti-fascism rules? The former especially doesn't ever seem to get enforced.) Fact is you won't even get beat up too much in print, given that this thread has already been a 100+ page beating of the Kayfabe Hitler and his supporters.

Meanwhile, brekin's been engaging in the current "liberal," New Cold War brainwash attacks on Trump that backfire into endorsements. Is he "wobbly on Ukraine"!? Omigodnoway! At least Clinton ripped off Russia, rather than letting Russia rip off America?! Granted, he should have just helped Russia, and ripping them off contributed to Putin's rise, but what can you do?! We're tribal, join one or die! Same kind of logic can be applied in justifying all the dealings with the various jihadi militias and crazed dictators "we" first supported and later bombed. At least it was in America's interest? Which damned America would that be? Not mine!

SLAD, meanwhile, is mostly keeping an eye on what's essential. Not that she's not partial to this myth of how the strictly home-grown, all-American Trump phenomenon is a actually the product of Russophilia/Commie Puppetry and that he will be either the Great Peacemaker with (Nordic's version) or Vile Capitulator to (brekin's version) the good/evil Putin. As if he's going to do anything if elected other than be on TV every day telling you whom he really wants to punch next, and let the MIC run the foreign policy show.

But mostly SLAD sticks to the point, that he's openly and proudly racist and misogynist (with all the Nazi/Duke and MRA endorsements to add cred to it) and that he is daily issuing incitements to official, mob and/or freelance violence and hatred against imaginary enemies and assorted Others: Mexicans, Muslims, "liberals," journalists, protesters, the Chinapeople taking your stuff, and the urban youth who are supposedly currently burning down America's cities a la Nixon '68 (with the cop union endorsements to add credibility to the latter).

The answer to the establishment can't be the Kayfabe Hitler.

I'd say the least worrisome things about the Trump phenomenon are the things you have the biggest shitfits over. I don't think he's remotely as racist or sexist as you think he is.

He will appoint a whole shitload of aggressive right wingers with New American Century type plans for the world, your worst nightmare, and it used to be mine, too, and I'm still not a fan, to say the fucking least, but there are other evils that terrify me a little bit more now. I would rather have a world ruthlessly dominated by American interests than a world ruthlessly dominated by Chinese/Russian/Iranian interests. If it's one or the other, I choose these evil assholes here, this evil system.

I won't be voting for him. 1) He's apparently a rape buddy of Jeffrey Epstein. 2) He's apparently owned by foreign interests, namely Putin, the deed to his soul probably having something to do with the first thing.

Then a-fucking-gain: He would merely be the second president who was a rape buddy of Jeffrey Epstein's, and the first president who was is basically the co-candidate of the only other viable option. And the Clintons are in the pocket of numerous foreign interests, too.

So, you know fucking what, yeah, if I lived in a swing state, I might suppress my gag reflex and actually vote for the fucking ghoul, instead of the other ghoul. Thankfully I live in Massachusetts, I'll be voting for myself, or Harry Truman, or Dwight Eisenhower, or a random person from the phonebook. But yes, I prefer Trump over Hillary, like I prefer chewing gum that has broken glass and arsenic in it versus chewing gum that has chewing gum broken glass, arsenic, and also pubes.

If you're gonna suggest that being pro-Trump is potentially grounds for banishment per the antifascist bylaws, then surely you're going to suggest the same for Hillary support, too? How could you possibly not? Hillary is not herself a warmongering fascist sociopath by your standards, too? Of course she is. She is the one who has actually been responsible for hundreds of thousands of killings. I mean, for fuck's sake, Trump suggests some gun nut could shoot Hillary someday, but right before that the same day it's Team Hillary who invites the Orlando shooter's spooky dad onstage behind her and it's Team Hillary who later that evening is implicated by Assange in the Seth Rich murder.

What's the difference? Would expressing nearly-equal righteous bamhammerish disgust over Hillary support not signal virtue clearly enough? Would it complicate too much the chill of self-regard that really laying into Trump gives you?

Fixed.

Although, it's more like...

Chewing gum with arsenic, broken glass, pubes, crystal meth, and pig's blood

over

Chewing gum with arsenic, broken glass, pubes, toxoplasma, and nanobots

...or something like that.

[SonicG]

See how this echoes...

Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief

KIEV, Ukraine — On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.

And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

...
The developments in Ukraine underscore the risky nature of the international consulting that has been a staple of Mr. Manafort’s business since the 1980s, when he went to work for the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign this spring, Mr. Manafort’s most prominent recent client was Mr. Yanukovych, who — like Mr. Marcos — was deposed in a popular uprising.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/po ... .html?_r=0

And wow, I hadn't realized the Wendi Deng (Murdoch) is supposedly "dating" Putin and that Rupert Murdoch married Jerry Hall!

[Nordic]

I am finally starting to think that Trump is probably a ploy, part of the overreaching conspiracy to guarantee a Clinton White House. This all seems so set up.

It's even more fake than a lot of us realized.

[82_28]

I am finally starting to think that Trump is probably a ploy, part of the overreaching conspiracy to guarantee a Clinton White House. This all seems so set up.

It's even more fake than a lot of us realized.

Indeed, Nordic. 8bit and I have been talking about this for months. He has to be a ploy. But the reason I started this thread way back when is that the normalization of a new and more modern racism will live on.