Thursday, June 30, 2016

The Nature of the Beast and the Gangs of Brown Shirts Who Follow Him

Where shall we begin?

A couple of days ago numerous sources reported the Trump campaign began sending out scads of emails to people soliciting donations. As all such mass electronic mailings do, the message was meant to look like either the candidate, or his son, Don Jr. sent them. While that is fine and normal there was a bit of a problem. A number of the emails went to members of parliaments in places like Iceland, Scotland, Australia, and England under the heading, "Help Make America Great Again."

This means one of two things. Either the Trump people are incredibly stupid, or they are participating in a criminal enterprise. That's because federal law makes it illegal to solicit, or accept donations from foreign nationals in a presidential race. At least two different groups have filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission. Don's people haven't commented on the situation, although a few of the over seas law makers have. Most of those who've gone public told Mr. Trump, in no uncertain terms, to bugger off.

The New York Times ran a story yesterday detailing the corruption of the failed, Trump Institute, which was a separate entity from the defunct Trump University. In 2005 Trump lent his name, for a fee, of course, to what amounted to a series of real estate seminars held in hotel ball rooms across the country.

His main participation was in the form of a TV infomercial during which he stated--see if this sounds familiar TU alums--he had hand picked the instructors and, in his words, "I put all of the concepts that have worked for me, new and old, into our seminar." He also told the studio audience, "People are loving it. People are really doing well with it and they're loving it."

The whole thing was actually a cheap jack scam run by a husband and wife team named Milin. They've been sued by numerous clients and have been under investigation for various things including fraud by state attorney generals from Texas to Florida. It turned out large chunks of the material being handed out to attendees, with Trump's photo prominently displayed on the front, had been plagiarized straight from a ten year old real estate manual. In fact the seminar, which cost each participant $2,000, was such a con that a help line manned by so called Institute experts repeatedly told callers to ignore what they'd learned in the sessions because it was either out of date, or useless.

Another New York Times story reports that despite all his promises to bring American jobs back and slap tariffs on foreign made merchandise, El Donald has been proud many of the products with his name on them come from overseas. The story notes that in 2013 he bragged his line of furniture came exclusively from a factory in Turkey. A few years before he was proud to announce crystal ware he was promoting was manufactured in Slovenia. And in 2012, after being kidded about where his clothing line was made he told David Letterman, "That's good we employ people in Bangladesh. They have to work too." Now he is under investigation for using undocumented immigrants to work on a hotel he's building in Washington, D.C.

Today the Los Angeles Times published the tale of an outfit called the New York Institute for Law and Society. In 2000, the Institute proclaimed it was a grass roots, anti gambling, organization funded by 12,000 pro family donors. That year they began taking out ads in papers opposing a proposed Mohawk Tribal casino that was scheduled to be added onto a race track in the Catskill Mountains, two hours from New York City.

As you can guess the ads were both apocalyptic and racist in nature. They claimed the Mohawk casino would bring increased crime, break up families, and cause locals to go bankrupt. Yes, all that, plus there would be a spike in violence thanks to the very presence of those savage Mohawks in the neighborhood.

As you can also guess the 12,000 grass root donors didn't exist. There was only Don Trump and his pal Roger Stone. Stone eventually testified, Trump personally signed off on every ad, while paying for them with over $1,000,000 of his own money. The real pro family reason for the sordid campaign? The new Mohawk property would cut into the bottom line of Trump owned casinos in Atlantic City. The state of New York found the affair so despicable it fined Trump $250,000. He paid the ticket without contesting it.

So there we have it. The republican party of the United States is set to nominate, not a potential president, but rather a crude high end grifter who will stoop to any means in order to fill his own pockets.

Not that it matters. The fascist brutes who are sold on Trump will ignore this entire, lurid, trail of incompetence, deception, hypocrisy, and brute lies. They are going to vote for him, as he said himself, "Even if I walk out onto a street in New York and shoot somebody."

Indeed, such is the nature of this particular beast and the gangs of neo brown shirts who follow him.



sic vita est


6-30-16

1 comment:

  1. I have said, and will continue to say through the election season, that this election will tell us more about what the American people have become than what it does about the billionaire bully or the less than pure-as-the-driven-snow Hillary, especially those who support Trump. One thing about it, for the first time in many years, both nominating conventions promise to be filled with high drama and great theater, so enjoy them both. They may be the last things to enjoy in American politics for a LONG time to come!

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