and so you say you are FOR voting, FOR non-violence, FOR democracy when the grift and graft and gunslinging are part and parcel, U$A U$A U$A
And once upon a time it was the hanging chads and those fucking voting machines. Now?
At the beginning of 2014, Trump was finally starting to seriously consider getting into the 2016 race. Around that time, CNBC was conducting an online poll to determine the 25 most influential business–people to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their network. Trump was one of the 200 businessmen listed as a candidate, alongside Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah, Warren Buffet, and the like. Unsurprisingly to just about everyone familiar with the list of candidates, Trump was sitting at 187 out of 200 after the first voting returns came in.
Donny Boy was irate.
Trump brought the daily operations of the entire Trump Organization to a screeching halt in order to address the egregious iniquity of his placement in an online poll for an informal award that some media outlet had just made up. Since you could only vote in the poll once from any device, Trump ordered everyone in his Organization to stop whatever they were doing and vote for him on every device they owned. Anyone who had additional computers or tablets at home was sent home from work to vote for the boss. When this company-wide subterfuge failed to move the needle at a national level, Trump ordered Cohen to somehow “fix” the situation.
Cohen had a good friend, John Gauger, who was the Chief Information Officer at Liberty University. Cohen had ingratiated himself to the higher-ups at Liberty for “fixing” a situation for Jerry Fallwell, Jr – the president of Liberty – and his wife involving some nude photos and a pool boy in Miami (that story eventually ended up getting out, as you may recall, turning out to be much, much worse than what Cohen was aware of at the time. Turns out those “morally upstanding” Fallwells were secretly into some really kinky sh*t with the pool boy!)
Anyway, Gauger had a side business called RedFinch Solutions, which provided SEO services and Internet reputation management. Within a day, he’d figured out a way to hack the algorithmic code CNBC’s website was using to run the poll. But since they couldn’t just hack in and give Trump a ton of votes from a single location, Gauger informed Cohen they’d need to purchase a boatload of IP addresses to rig the poll without detection. They weren’t all that expensive – 100,000 IP addresses for $7,500, which Trump immediately authorized.
Gauger bought them up and ran the hack, vaulting Trump up to 29th place with plenty of time still to go.
Once he realized he’d leapfrogged from 187 to 29, Trump authorized another $7,500 to buy another 100,000 IP addresses. He wanted to win the entire thing, but Cohen and Gauger managed to convince him that would look too suspicious – possibly inviting the type of forensic audit that would get them all found out – and to just accept making it into the top 10. Trump begrudgingly acquiesced, and ended up coming in 9th.
According to Cohen, Trump spent the next day making and taking phone calls from everyone he knew to discuss his “winning” the “ninth-most-important businessman of the past 25 years in a CNBC poll.” Although the Trump Organization was in the midst of working on a number of international real estate deals worth billions of dollars to the company, Trump just bailed on the business operations to boast to anyone who would listen about “winning” a poll in which he came in 9th, and only because he’d cheated to get there.
Four Dead in Ohio?
Alex Gibney
The scandal — or the crime, for which two people were convicted, Matt Borges and Larry Householder, plus others — went something like this: FirstEnergy dropped $60 million into a 501(c)(4), which was used at the direction of Larry Householder, first to get himself elected as speaker of the house, then to ram through a bill called HB6, which had been written by FirstEnergy to subsidize FirstEnergy to the tune of over $1 billion. Then some of that money was also used to muscle people who were trying to come up with a referendum to repeal HB6.
Part two of The Dark Money Game, Wealth of the Wicked, reveals the unscrupulous, behind-the-scenes ties between Citizens United and the crusade to overturn Roe v. Wade — including one zealot who flips sides, Robert Schenck. Tell us about all that and the role that Citizens United played in the defeat of reproductive rights.
Alex Gibney
It’s about what I’d call “an unholy alliance” between big business and evangelical Christians who are extremely antiabortion. The evangelical Christians had popular fervor, a very emotional issue, and some popular support. There was no popular support for what the big-business people wanted to do. But they had a lot of money.
Along comes into this unholy alliance a gentleman named Jim Bopp, an attorney, who was working very hard to try to overturn Roe v. Wade. He concluded that nothing was ever going to happen unless he could destroy the system of campaign finance restrictions that had been put in place by [Senators] John McCain and Russ Feingold. So he labored very hard through a number of decisions that led up to Citizens United, and he literally took it to the Supreme Court, where it was argued by somebody else.
Ultimately, Citizens United was decided, and henceforth there would be no limits on contributions to political campaigns by corporations and individuals. The only restriction was that money had to go into independent organizations like super PACs or 501(c)(4)s, and there was supposed to be no coordination with the candidate. Now we all know that’s a joke. Particularly we know it because of the events we show in Ohio Confidential.
Ed Rampell
Leonard Leo has been called one of the biggest kingmakers in American history. What do you think about Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society?
Alex Gibney
Leonard Leo is a very interesting figure. He was always a money-raiser. You can go back to his yearbook and see that, I believe, he was called the “moneybags [kid].” In any event, Leonard Leo turns out to be a master of raising money. He has two agendas: one is an extreme deregulatory agenda, which is the ideological agenda of the Federalist Society, even though it bills itself as a grand debating society. Actually it’s deeply conservative and interested in basically tearing down the regulatory state.
The other thing about Leonard Leo is he’s a deeply devout Catholic, but a deeply conservative Catholic. One of the things he does is to raise enormous amounts of money to promote the campaigns of justices who share both his deregulatory fervor and his religious inclinations, so that when they form a majority on the Supreme Court, and Roe v. Wade comes up for consideration, it’s overturned — you have the Dobbs decision. Leonard Leo plays a very powerful role as a dark-money aggregator, one who’s responsible for funding a lot of extremely right-wing causes and also trying to enforce his vision of Catholicism on the rest of the nation.
Ed Rampell
I believe Jane Mayer says in your films that Citizens United “basically legalized bribery by calling it free speech.” I think you, as the narrator of the films, also say that in any other democracy, this would be criminal.
Alex Gibney
When you give a candidate money, or effectively give a candidate money, and you ask for something in return, that’s corruption. That’s bribery. It’s simple; that’s quid pro quo. A long time ago, that was illegal. But over time the Supreme Court has eroded the statutes that were used to go after that kind of bribery. So much so that in a recent decision — involving the mayor of an Indiana town who gave a garbage truck contract to the Peterbilt [Motors] Company and was given a kickback — the Supreme Court said, “Well, because he got the kickback after the awarding of the contract, we can’t consider that to be a kickback at all; it’s a gratuity, therefore utterly legal.”
Ed Rampell
Are some of the Supreme Court justices themselves receiving forms of bribes?
Alex Gibney
In effect. We see that Supreme Court justices get trips, favors, sometimes RVs from people who have business before the court. There’s no doubt about that, and that’s been well documented.
After the totally-predictable blow-back, Trump announced that taxpayers would inot be footing the bill for his flying Taj Majal — it was actually a GIFT from the Qatari royal family!
Because they’re just really generous!
This didn’t actively improve the situation since forcing taxpayers to pay for your private jet doesn’t violate the Constitution…but accepting gifts from foreign states does:
The U.S. Constitution — Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 — prevents federal officials, those holding an office of “profit or trust,” from accepting gifts, emoluments (benefits), offices, or titles from foreign rulers or states.
This is known as the “Emoluments Clause.”
It doesn’t matter that the $400-million gift would make it the most extravagant, expensive gift in American history — the value isn’t the point — what matters is that, regardless of the cost, THIS ACT IS ILLEGAL.
Democratic politicians were quick to point out this painfully-obvious fact.
Trump responded with a tweet calling Dems “crooked losers” for rejecting a FREE GIFT…to the Department of Defense:
“So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane. Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!! MAGA”
During Blondi Bondi’s Senate-confirmation hearing, she was asked if she had any potential conflicts of interest that could interfere with her ability to execute the duties of the Attorney General.
To her credit, she named two:
- Her work for the America First Policy Institute (a nonprofit think tank founded in 2021 to promote Trump’s public policy agenda)
- Her brother’s legal practice (Brad Bondi is currently vying to be head of the D.C. Bar Association)
To her supreme discredit, Bondi conveniently failed to mention three others:
- She’s a lobbyist for The GEO Group — a private prison company accused of safety violations, providing inadequate health care, and poor management practices — whose largest source of revenue is ICE, who stands to rake in hundreds of millions off Trump’s new immigration policies.
- As a partner at Ballard Partners — one of the top lobbying firms in the country — she’s lobbied on behalf of more than 30 different clients (including Amazon and Uber), many of whom are facing an assortment of federal lawsuits for a myriad of violations.
- As a FARA-registered lobbyist (Foreign Agents Registration Act), Bondi earned $115k a month lobbying Congress on behalf of…Qatar.
Oopsie.
Cunts:
$750 million just so Trump could commute to his daily golf outings in Midas opulence.
More cunts: “But they/Amazon won’t be giving raises this year.”
And then there is this Orthedox Jew-Zionist-Israel-First cunt:
And those Jews too:
And yet, money for blowjobs at 35,000 feet and cocaine parties for ZioAzovNaziLensky and the unending trillions to the Jews in Jew Landia.
Banana Republic U$AU$A U$A . . . . Beginning Tuesday, the hottest conditions will be found in Texas, where temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher will be common for much of the state, the agency said.
“Expect record breaking heat across much of central and southern Texas through mid-week,” the weather service said Monday in its short-range forecast.
Banana Republic all sizzling with graft and DOGE — Department of Graft and Ego.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) marked its 75th anniversary on Saturday after a significant announcement affecting its workforce. According to an internal memo obtained by 7News, the NSF is reducing its temporary workforce from 368 employees to approximately 70, demanding all full-time employees return to in-person work, and eliminating the Division of Equity for Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).
The memo indicated that some NSF positions will be reassigned within 30 days. The agency, which supports research and education in all non-medical fields of science and engineering, will spend the next month determining which 70 positions are deemed essential.
Mid-Air Collisions, a la Banana Republic:
The United States aviation industry continues to grapple with the worst air traffic controller shortage in nearly 30 years as a recent spate of incidents has thrust the high-stress profession into the spotlight.
Now a federal collegiate training program is aiming to fill vacancies at US air traffic control towers faster with fresh-out-of-college recruits. The FAA has partnered with five schools, including Tulsa Community College in Oklahoma, on these enhanced programs.
Two Tulsa Community College students, Tiana Murphy and Rebecca Nobles, are set to graduate from the FAA’s Enhanced Air Traffic-Collegiate Training Initiative Program on Monday. It offers FAA Academy-equivalent air traffic control training, according to the FAA.
More Nazis in our midst: A group of 59 white South Africans has arrived in the US, where they are to be granted refugee status.
President Donald Trump has said the refugee applications for the country’s Afrikaner minority had been expedited as they were victims of “racial discrimination”.
The South African government said the group were not suffering any such persecution that would merit refugee status.
The Trump administration has halted all other refugee admissions, including for applicants from warzones. Human Rights Watch described the move as a cruel racial twist, saying that thousands of people – many black and Afghan refugees – had been denied refuge in the US.
This is how semi-democracy sort of is supposed to work:
Earlier this month, we offered a half-hearted endorsement of Portland Public Schools’ $1.83 billion bond measure on the May ballot.
We don’t dispute the urgent need to finish rebuilding PPS’ high schools and make repairs across the district’s aging elementary and middle schools. But the price tags for the high schools and the lack of a clear plan for tackling the backlog of seismic, HVAC and other fixes for schools gave us pause.
The board, we wrote, needed to earn Portlanders’ “yes” vote by providing more information on cost reductions to the high school designs, increased allocations to elementary and middle school repairs and its prioritization for fixes. Community members across the city similarly questioned the vagueness for such a large ask.
Credit the board for answering the call. Last week, the PPS directors unanimously adopted a comprehensive resolution that states their commitment to identifying and resolving seismic issues; directs the district to develop a researched plan for actions; commits to prioritizing seismic fixes and sets parameters for allocating funds among seismic and other critical infrastructural projects. The resolution, drafted by board members Herman Greene, Gary Hollands and Julia Brim-Edwards, also reserves $100 million for emergency needs and articulates the values that should guide the district and future boards.
Their actions in recognition of and response to the community’s concerns lead us to endorse a “yes” vote for Measure 26-259.
Jews: A surveillance tool exists that can extract your messages, activate your microphone, track your movements, and intercept encrypted conversations, all without your knowledge or interaction.
Sold under the banner of fighting crime and terrorism, this software has been used by governments not just against threats, but against journalists, dissidents, and human rights defenders.
Jews: Stephen “I Am the Only Jew with Real Nazi Credentials” Miller.
Fascism is the Beating Heart of Western “Civilization”
The historical record is damning. On the very day Europeans danced in the streets celebrating Nazi defeat, French colonial authorities were slaughtering up to 45,000 Algerians in Sétif, Guelma, and Kherrata. Their crime? Daring to believe that the “freedom” and “self-determination” so loudly proclaimed by Allied propaganda might apply to them too.
The Victims Liberated Europe From Its Colonial Auto-Immune Disease: The Ultimate Historical Irony
When France fell to Nazi Germany, tens of thousands of Algerians, Moroccans, Senegalese, and Vietnamese joined the fight to liberate France—not out of loyalty to their oppressors, but in desperate hope that defeating fascism abroad might finally break their own chains at home. The bitter irony cuts deep: the victims of Europe’s colonial fascism were sacrificing their lives to save Europe from the same colonialism that had simply turned inward and begun devouring Europe itself.
You read that right—Europe’s colonized subjects bled and died to rescue their tormentors from colonialism’s auto-immune disease, as the imperial violence cultivated across the Global South for centuries finally rebounded to consume its creators. The ultimate historical tragedy: the colonized dying to save the colonizers from themselves, only to be rewarded with massacres for daring to ask for the same freedom they had helped secure for Europe.
Paul Haeder, Author 