a bully is as a bully does…the steamroller goes rolling along…the unhinged steamroller…I’m so embarrassed for our country…once again…I just can’t believe what happened there…on national TV…that was the first debate?…oh my God!…it should be called the first travesty…the first bullying…the first embarrassment…it was so painful to watch…the worst is trump’s call to “stand back and stand by” to his white supremacist followers…we are in for a horrible time…not that we don’t know that already…trump wasn’t called on any of his lies…Chris Wallace lost control, but actually he never had it…the whole thing was disgusting…after it was all over, I switched to FOX trump TV to see what they had to say…another travesty… Matt Schlapp’s wife, Mercedes was speaking to Hannity…she said trump successfully defended his Supreme Court pick…jr. was on also…the media is against his father…boo hoo…and Hannity goes along with him…I guess anyone can spin anything to fit your purposes…still and all it was such an embarrassment…I shutter to think the world was watching that tantrum…so sad for our country…I wish I hadn’t watched, it was so painful…Pam told me earlier that she would not watch…I’m glad I didn’t press her to watch…she later told me she tried watching 3 different times and couldn’t do it…she texted – “I tried to watch but couldn’t. Making me sick then sad.”…that’s it in a nutshell… Michael Steele ( former Republican Party Chairman ) said “it was an abomination!…we’ve seen it all, there’s nothing more…all we have to do now is vote!”…Barbara Boxer ( former Senator from CA ) “this was the abusive boyfriend ranting and raving”…David Plouffe ( former Obama Campaign Manger ) “what we saw tonight, shows us that we have to vote”… but in the end, 202,000 of our loved ones are dead because of trump…that’s the bottom line…trump lies, people die…he is an incredible danger to our Democracy…flush the TURD November Third…

it was raining off and on all day…perfect for this first debate…it was dreary…

on a lighter note…Jim Belushi on Sunday Morning…cannabis farmer who’s product almost went up in smoke in the fires raging in Oregon…he invited the many firefighters for a steak dinner…”This is part two of a two-part series developed by Brad Turner, Editor, Cannabis Investing Forum and written by Philip Rebentisch, Gotta Story Media.: “

The first article was about actor-comedian-musician Jim Belushi and covered Jim’s stellar entertainment career. He performed in the world-famous comedy troupe Second City, wrote for and joined the cast of Saturday Night Live, had his own eight-season TV series According to Jim, acted in wildly successful feature films, and fronted the chart-topping blues band, The Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd. He’s worked hard and earned his celebrity status, yet many people don’t know he owns a successful cannabis business in Oregon named Belushi’s Farm. To that end, Jim is speaking (and performing) at the Cannabis Investing Forum that’s part of the inaugural ExpoCannaBiz Business Conference, May 9-11, in Cartagena, Colombia.

An Artisanal Cannabis Farmer“I believe so deeply in the spirit and medicine cannabis offers in healing our families, communities, and world, that I decided to let the Spirit of the Land and the Water Spirit of the Rogue River irrigate and grow this powerful cannabis medicine.” ⎼ Jim Belushi

Jim first came to the Rogue River Valley in Southern Oregon 12 years ago while on vacation visiting longtime friends at their ranch. He quickly fell in love with the area and purchased a 13-acre homestead in Eagle Point. He added 80 acres when a close, spiritual friend and fellow farmer Becca passed away. She wanted Jim to purchase her land, and in a fitting accolade, he named the road leading to the expanded property after her.Like any good movie, his purchase has a good plot twist as Jim didn’t set out to become a cannabis farmer. But when Oregon legalized adult-use cannabis that same year, Jim changed his mind, putting him on a course to help others. He began with a relatively small grow and expanded into a fully licensed, 22,000 square foot operation. Today, he sells his artisanal, signature cannabis directly to Oregon’s finest dispensaries under the brand name of Belushi’s Private Vault. Strains include Jim’s personal favorite, Cherry Pie (AKA the marriage counselor), Blue Dragon, and Black Diamond OG. He’s also currently growing a small amount of “Captain Jack’s” prized strain, Gulzar Afghanica. Back in the early days of SNL, the show’s actors and writers called Captain Jack’s cannabis “the smell of SNL.” Not surprisingly, Captain Jack was frequently seen backstage and at after parties following the live show.
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According to the Farm’s website, “The premium sun-grown genetics are cultivated, hand harvested and cured by a core seven-person team. We sun-grow all natural and rigorously tested cannabis. Everyone on this farm has a beautiful way about them because of their intimate work with this plant. It has changed me as a man.” Providing medicinal cannabis is a spiritual calling to help Veterans suffering from PTSD, as well as ordinary people and their families dealing with trauma. For Jim, it’s also deeply personal.
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Cannabis Could Have Saved Jim’s Brother

John Belushi rocketed to stardom along with the other original cast members of Saturday Night Live in the late 1970s. John’s tragic death in 1982 by an overdose of cocaine and heroin ( known as a speedball ) tore Jim’s family apart. Jim adamantly believes that John’s early, tragic death could have been prevented. Most people are unaware that John was an all-star high school football player, and Jim witnessed his brother having a seizure. Jim thinks his brother suffered from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) caused by too many blows to the head as a middle linebacker. In addition to the party scene so prevalent in the entertainment industry, John may have been using illegal drugs as a way to self-medicate. Jim has stated numerous times that had John used cannabis as a medicine and not just to party, John would be alive today. Jim readily acknowledges that back then, people simply weren’t aware of its medicinal potential. This is one reason why Jim considers himself as a cannabis advocate.

While Jim is a genuine Hollywood star, he is also a genuine, ordinary guy whose heart is in the right place. He’s heavily involved in the local community with projects in and around Jackson County, Oregon. He’s restored the covered stage on his property where the Ashland Elks Lodge still holds their annual picnic. The stage is one of the main reasons that attracted him to the farm, and he uses it to perform at parties and during harvests. In the nearby city of Medford, Jim’s helping to restore the historic Holly Theater. In Eagle Point itself, Jim’s involved with rebuilding the Butte Creek Mill which was destroyed in a 2016 electrical fire. The mission is to not only preserve the mill’s heritage but also improve the environment.”

what can I say?, nice work if you can get it!…from his segment on Sunday Morning last Sunday…”This year has been, yet again, historically grim when it comes to wildfires burning in the western U.S. In Oregon alone, at least 10 people lost their lives, tens of thousands were evacuated, and over a million acres burned.

Of the many people affected, there was one you might not have expected: actor Jim Belushi. “The devastation, it’s just changed the community,” he told correspondent Luke Burbank as they surveyed the damage. “It’s just a graveyard here.”

Belushi lives along the Rogue River in Eagle Point, Oregon. “The fires were way up there by that hill. And so we used this hose to hose the house down, hose the grass, and hose the field down and keep a little water break.”

It’s a place he first visited some ten years ago on a family vacation: “One day I went into the river, skinny-dipping. And it was like a baptism. That was the start.”

So, he bought an old Elk’s Lodge picnic grounds, built a house, built a sweat lodge (“Oh yeah. I am, like, a little shaman, you know?”), and eventually bought the neighboring farm, which is when things got a little trippy.

That’s right: Belushi started a cannabis farm, all of which is being documented on a new reality show, “Growing Belushi,” on Discovery Go.

“I am SO obsessed,” Belushi said. “It’s like talking to you right now, my eyes are watching for squirrels and gophers. These pests eat the plants. Aphids, Rusick mites. You are doing battle with Mother Nature.”

Belushi is involved every step of the way, from the greenhouse (“The air has to constantly be circulating”), to the drying room, to the finished product. And he dotes on the ladybugs that eat aphids. “I love them! I personify them. I give them names. I play music for them. And I believe if you love them, they will move on to the world and love others, and help them.”

If you’re wondering where this Hollywood actor got his work ethic, it was from washing dishes at his father’s restaurant in Chicago. The Belushis lived in Wheaton, Illinois, where they were some of the only Albanian immigrants. “I wouldn’t let my friends come in the house,” he recalled, “because you’d open up the door and you can smell liver and onions cooking and I’m like, ‘Uhhh, you know, just wait outside. I’ll be right out.'”

Jimmy, as he was known then, grew up in the very large shadow of his older brother, John Belushi” “John looked like Dustin Hoffman in ‘The Graduate’ in a senior picture, you know? Honor Society, prom king. He had it all going for him. He left no room for me. So, I was the star criminal, the star troublemaker. I was on probation from the ages of 13 to 18.”

Jim was inspired to try acting after watching his brother perform at Second City and “Saturday Night Live. ” As Jim Belushi was working his way up the comedy ladder, John Belushi had become arguably one of the biggest stars in the world.

Then, in March of 1982, John died in Los Angeles. He was just 33. “Part of it was not just losing the sibling, part of it was losing a sibling to drug overdose,” said Jim. “It just breaks the family up. It’s like throwing a hand grenade in the family.”

Burbank said, “Danny Aykroyd, I think, famously said that if your brother had been a pothead, he might still be alive?”

“Well, that made me think for a long time, and that actually set me on this journey,” Jim said.

In the nearly four decades since John Belushi’s passing, it’s actually been Jim Belushi who’s become a huge star. But hanging out on the farm with him, you can’t help but think that it might be this role, of cannabis farmer, that’s the one he was born to play – and one that let him help put the past in the past.

He told Burbank, “The beautiful, thing about farming is that you’re in the ground. under the sun. And it’s just, it roots you. It literally grounds you.”

To Belushi, these cannabis plants have become almost like family – family that came within three miles of burning to the ground. So, when he got an opportunity last week to thank the first responders who helped fight those fires to a free steak lunch, he jumped at the chance, in the most Belushi way possible – by literally jumping on a table.

He told those assembled, “I wanna thank all you men and women for not only putting yourself on the line, but being on the line to save and help this community. And we’re going to continue and help rebuild, so thank you so much! You like the meat?

$70,000 please…how about some orange make-up?…we’ll call it a tan..I’ll throw it in for the $70,000…you can write it off your income tax…

I gave myself a haircut today…can I take $20.00 off my income tax?…that I didn’t pay myself…I figured I saved myself $100.00 giving myself haircuts… since January…that was the last time I paid for a haircut…I worked with someone who never paid for a haircut…he did it himself…I realize with my curly hair, it doesn’t much matter who cuts my hair…sort of…but can you imagine taking $70,000 write off your income tax?…my guess is if you’re used to getting away with a scam, you keep on doing it…no accounting, so let it ride…I paid Pam back for some groceries she bought for me…can I take that off my income tax?…like trump took $747,622 deduction for consulting fees…problem is, that money was paid to Ivanka, to a company she owned… yeah, charity begins at home, doesn’t it?…

in 2011, the IRS started reviewing trump’s tax refund of $72.9 Million…I think this is trump’s “under audit”…the IRS has been understaffed, on purpose…from The Atlantic article by Paul Kiel, Jesse Eisinger and Propublica from December 11, 2018: “The Golden Age of Rich People Not Paying Their Taxes: An eight-year campaign to slash the IRS’s budget has left the agency understaffed, hamstrung, and operating with archaic equipment. The result: a hundred-billion-dollar heist. – “In the summer of 2008, William Pfeil made a startling discovery: Hundreds of foreign companies that operated in the U.S. weren’t paying U.S. taxes, and his employer, the Internal Revenue Service, had no idea. Under U.S. law, companies that do business in the Gulf of Mexico owe the American government a piece of what they make drilling for oil there or helping those that do. But the vast majority of the foreign companies weren’t paying anything, and taxpaying American companies were upset, arguing that it unfairly allowed the foreign rivals to underbid for contracts.

Pfeil and the IRS started pursuing the non-U.S. entities. Ultimately, he figures he brought in more than $50 million in previously unpaid taxes over the course of about five years. It was an example of how the tax-collecting agency is supposed to work.

But then Congress began regularly reducing the IRS budget. After 43 years with the agency, Pfeil—who had hoped to reach his 50th anniversary—was angry about the “steady decrease in budget and resources” the agency had seen. He retired in 2013 at 68.

After Pfeil left, he heard that his program was being shut down. “I don’t blame the IRS,” says Pfeil. “I blame the Congress for not giving us the budget to do the job.”

Had the billions in budget reductions occurred all at once, with tens of thousands of auditors, collectors, and customer-service representatives streaming out of government buildings in a single day, the collapse of the IRS might have gotten more attention. But there have been no mass layoffs or dramatic announcements. Instead, it’s taken eight years to bring the agency that funds the government this low. Over time, the IRS has slowly transformed, one employee departure at a time.

The result is a bureaucracy on life support and tens of billions in lost government revenue. ProPublica estimates a toll of at least $18 billion every year, but the true cost could easily run tens of billions of dollars higher.

The cuts are depleting the staff members who help ensure that taxpayers pay what they owe. As of last year, the IRS had 9,510 auditors. That’s down a third from 2010. The last time the IRS had fewer than 10,000 revenue agents was 1953, when the economy was a seventh of its current size. And the IRS is still shrinking. Almost a third of its remaining employees will be eligible to retire in the next year, and with morale plummeting, many of them will.

The IRS conducted 675,000 fewer audits in 2017 than it did in 2010, a drop in the audit rate of 42 percent. But even those stark numbers don’t tell the whole story, say current and former IRS employees: Auditors are stretched thin, and they’re often forced to limit their investigations and move on to the next audit as quickly as they can.

Without enough staff, the IRS has slashed even basic functions. It has drastically pulled back from pursuing people who don’t bother filing their tax returns. New investigations of “nonfilers,” as they’re called, dropped from 2.4 million in 2011 to 362,000 last year. According to the inspector general for the IRS, the reduction results in at least $3 billion in lost revenue each year. Meanwhile, collections from people who do file but don’t pay have plummeted. Tax obligations expire after 10 years if the IRS doesn’t pursue them. Such expirations were relatively infrequent before the budget cuts began. In 2010, $482 million in tax debts lapsed. By 2017, according to internal IRS collection reports, that figure had risen to $8.3 billion, 17 times as much as in 2010. The IRS’s ability to investigate criminals has atrophied as well.Corporations and the wealthy are the biggest beneficiaries of the IRS’s decay. Most Americans’ interaction with the IRS is largely automated. But it takes specialized, well-trained personnel to audit a business or a billionaire or to unravel a tax scheme—and those employees are leaving in droves and taking their expertise with them. For the country’s largest corporations, the danger of being hit with a billion-dollar tax bill has greatly diminished. For the rich, who research shows evade taxes the most, the IRS has become less and less of a force to be feared.The story has been different for poor taxpayers. The IRS oversees one of the government’s largest anti-poverty programs, the earned income-tax credit, which provides cash to the working poor. Under continued pressure from Republicans, the IRS has long made a priority of auditing people who receive that money, and as the IRS has shrunk, those audits have consumed even more resources, accounting for 36 percent of audits last year. The credit’s recipients—whose annual income is typically less than $20,000—are now examined at rates similar to those who make $500,000 to $1 million a year. Only people with incomes above $1 million are examined much more frequently.

We submitted a detailed list of questions to the IRS and asked about the budget cuts’ effects on the agency’s enforcement efforts. The agency replied with a brief statement. “The IRS has substantial resources to identify and audit noncompliant taxpayers and continues to deter those attempting to evade their legal obligations,” it said.

In ProPublica’s interviews with dozens of tax professionals and more than 50 former and current IRS employees—part of an ongoing series on the state of tax enforcement—many agency veterans wondered whether the damage of the past several years will ever be undone. And they had a greater worry: that the American public will inevitably realize how weak the IRS has become.

The effects of an explosion in tax cheating would be dire. The nation’s already soaring budget deficit would surge by hundreds of billions of dollars more, pushing it well past $1 trillion. Commissioners of the IRS, starting with President George W. Bush’s appointee, Douglas Shulman, have warned Congress about a crisis like this since the budget cuts began, in 2011. But after eight years, Republican lawmakers, who are chiefly responsible for the reductions, show no signs that they think the danger is urgent. By the time the danger becomes indisputable, immense harm will already have been done.

“In the last few years, it was really frustrating,” said Pam Reicks, a former manager at the IRS who, until she retired at the end of last year, oversaw a program to audit wealthy taxpayers with undeclared offshore bank accounts. “It’s like in the fall when you bob for apples,” she told us. “You’ve got a tub of apples and can’t use your hands to grab them. You can see all this abuse and fraud, and people not paying their taxes, but can’t use your hands to get it.”

The IRS has never been a popular cause on Capitol Hill. But Democrats and Republicans long shared a grudging consensus that the agency’s basic work of tax collection deserved protection.

That changed when the Republican Party came into power in 1994 and Newt Gingrich became the speaker of the House. The new majority’s main priority was tax cuts, and vilifying the IRS helped its case. Some conservatives favored a “fair tax,” a consumption tax based on purchases. Proponents said that this simplified approach to taxation would allow them to “abolish” the IRS.

The notion wasn’t a fringe position within the party. Former Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected mainstream Republican, ran for president in 1996 on a platform of abolishing the IRS. A Republican congressman in 1998 introduced a bill to repeal the Internal Revenue Code by 2002. “Abolish the IRS” remains a potent talking point. Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, campaigned on the slogan when he ran for president in 2016.

In 1997 and 1998, the Republican-controlled Senate held a series of dramatic hearings on alleged abuses by the IRS. Agency employees testified behind black curtains with their voices disguised, like Mafia snitches, to protect their identity. The testimony depicted an organization run amok, with claims of biased examiners and lurid tales of agents in flak jackets storming establishments. One restaurant owner told of a raid to seize business records at the home of an employee, during which agents forced a teenage boy to the floor at gunpoint and made a group of teenage girls at a slumber party get dressed “under the watchful eyes of male agents.” A USA Today headline read: “Witnesses Accuse IRS Investigators of ‘Gestapo-like’ Raids.”

Congress followed the hearings with a sweeping overhaul of the agency, limiting the IRS’s collection powers and independence and giving taxpayers new protections. In the Senate, the reform bill passed 97–0 and President Bill Clinton signed it.

It was only afterward that the Government Accountability Office debunked the allegations of IRS abuses. “Generally, we found no corroborating evidence that the criminal investigations described at the hearing were retaliatory against the specific taxpayer,” the report stated. “In addition, we could not independently substantiate that IRS employees had vendettas against these taxpayers.”

By then it was too late. Reeling from the new law and the public attacks, IRS audits and collections tumbled to historic lows.

Recovery took years, but because the IRS wasn’t a locus of partisan warfare during the presidency of George W. Bush, it did happen. By 2010, under the administration of Barack Obama, the IRS’s budget hit its high point: $14 billion in today’s dollars, about $2.5 billion above where it is today. Collections rebounded.

But that spring, over unified Republican opposition, Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act. The sprawling health-care bill was also, indirectly, a sprawling tax bill, since it relied on the IRS to help administer many of its provisions.

In the midterm elections that followed, Republicans took the House of Representatives in a wave similar to that of 1994. The first bill introduced by House Republicans in 2011 was a budget that slashed funding across the government and took special aim at the IRS. In addition to calling for a cut to its budget of $600 million, the bill prohibited the IRS from using any of its funding to carry out key parts of the Affordable Care Act. It didn’t pass.

Since then, Republicans have cited the ACA as a reason to withhold funding from the IRS. In 2013, in response to an IRS request for a budget increase, former Representative Ander Crenshaw, a Florida Republican who then sat on the House Appropriations Committee, said, “Any kind of increase of this magnitude was going to be a challenge for some very basic reasons. There are a lot of objections to the Affordable Health Care Act, a lot of objections to Obamacare.”…

In 2013, the IRS’s bulwarks collapsed. First, as part of a budget deal with Obama’s administration, Republicans got what they had previously sought: a $600 million cut, which came on top of cuts in the previous two years. Then things got even worse….

Hal Rogers, who was then the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee…launched into a litany of criticisms: The IRS was trying to implement the Affordable Care Act against Congress’s wishes; it was spending too much, wasting too much, resisting reforms, and letting the poor commit too much fraud. By that time, the Republican narrative had taken hold: The IRS had to be “held accountable” for wasting millions on lavish conferences and persecuting conservative nonprofits for their political beliefs…the scandals provided the rationale for ongoing budget cuts. The IRS lacked the “moral authority” to appeal for a budget increase, said Republican Representative Paul Ryan, then the chair of the House Budget Committee, in 2013…In 2015, congressional Republicans forced the sudden $350 million cut…Lacking staff, the IRS has shrunk programs—even those that brought in billions. One such casualty: pursuing taxpayers who do not bother to file tax returns…As the IRS has fallen further and further behind on collecting the debts of those who filed a return but didn’t pay their taxes, many of those obligations have been allowed to surpass the 10-year statute of limitations…

In 2015, when the IRS’s ability to answer taxpayer phone calls hit a low point, the budget discussions on Capitol Hill took a turn. Republicans agreed to boost the agency’s funding—but only part of it. The “taxpayer services” portion, which goes toward hiring seasonal employees to answer the phones, got bumped up. The “enforcement” portion of the budget continued to be pared: Today, adjusting for inflation, it’s $1.5 billion lower than it was in 2010, a decrease of 23 percent…in 2018,

Republicans again selectively increased IRS funding. The massive new tax-cut law has dumped loads of extra work on the IRS, which now has to write rules interpreting the legislation, reprogram aged computer systems, and retrain its employees. Republicans understand that if the IRS fails to roll out their tax overhaul well, they might feel the political consequences. To help the agency cope, Congress handed it an extra $320 million, with the instruction that the money be used solely to implement the new law.

The budget for 2019 is likely to be more of the same”….and here we are in 2020…with trump fighting for his $72.9 Million tax refund…the Atlantic article was much longer…how the Republicans slashed the IRS buget, and only increased it’s budget to “implement the new law” that gave the top 1%, like trump, tremendous tax cuts…that enabled the 1% to add millions to their coffers, not the national treasury…the Republicans threw “fiscal responsibility” out the window…they don’t care…it was all just pay back to their donors…their dark money…and it continues to get worst with the Republicans holding the Senate…get rid of Moscow Mitch…and Lindsay Graham…and the rest of them…but most of all, flush the TURD November Third…

if you haven’t read The New York Times article about trump’s taxes…you can and should…along with the full article in The Atlantic – “The Golden Age of Rich People Not Paying Their Taxes”…trump’s “fake news” is obviously not “fake”…trump is fake…again flush the TURD November Third…

first debate tomorrow night…trump might try to get away with him being “smart” that he doesn’t pay any taxes…that remains to be seen…

 

nothing is certain except death and taxes…maybe just death in terms of our president…The New York Times report that trump paid no federal income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years…long concealed records show trump’s chronic loses and years of tax avoidance…we found out that of 18 years, 11 of those years he paid no federal income tax…trump declared $1.4 Billion, that’s Billion with a B, in losses from his core businesses for 2004 and 2009…trump took the tax deductions and left the banks with the losses…the reason no bank would lend him money except for Deutsche Bank, and we know how that worked out…or soon we will…The Times has obtained 2 decades of trump’s taxes…his Doral National Golf Course which he tried his damndest to get the G-7 Summit there, telling us it’s the best place after an exhaustive search…yeah, right!…in 2012 he paid $150 Million for it, through 2018, his losses have totaled $162.3 Million…3 of trump’s golf courses in Europe have reported a combined $63.3 million in losses…( he lobbied our Ambassador to get the British Open golf tournament scheduled at his trump Turnberry resort in Scotland )…he took $70,000 as business expenses during The Apprentice for haircuts, fuel and meals…he paid a photographer $210,000 over years of shooting events at Mar-A-Lago and deducted that as a business expense…9 trump entities together have written off at least $75,000 paid to a favorite hair and make-up artist of Ivanka’s…his total federal income tax refund would eventually grow to $70.1 million, plus $2,738,684 in interest, he also received $21.2 Million in state and local refunds which often piggybacked on federal filings…he’s had a decade’s long audit battle with the IRS over the legitimacy of a $72.9 Million tax refund that he claimed and received…( his famous audit? )…he paid federal income tax of $750.00 in 2016…trump is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 Million, most coming due within 4 years…remember during one of the debates with Hillary she said he paid no income taxes and he said he “was smart”?…Schumer said “raise your hand if you’ve paid over $ 750.00 in taxes in any given year…from The Guardian article by David Smith: “Will the New York Times taxes report sink Donald Trump?: His returns examined at last, the president stands exposed as a tax avoider and serial debtor. It raises serious questions – but also, most likely, the passions of his fervent supporters.

From the moment he rode down an escalator in the marble-clad, gold-trimmed Trump Tower to declare his candidacy for US president, Donald Trump was selling himself as a successful businessman who could run a successful economy.

It was an image cultivated with voters for a decade on The Apprentice, the reality TV show in which Trump sat in judgment on aspiring entrepreneurs and told most: “You’re fired!”

On Sunday the mask was finally torn off. According to a blockbuster New York Times investigation into his taxes, the self-proclaimed billionaire, a personification of the hedonism and extravagance of the 1980s, has been losing more money than he makes.

These are the three key points of the Times report:

• Trump is not very good at business
• Trump is very good at avoiding taxes
• Trump may have serious conflicts of interests with foreign powers

Will any of it have a major impact on his reelection chances? Up to a point.

Trump declared a staggering $1.4bn in losses from his core businesses for 2008 and 2009. He appears to have personally guaranteed loans totalling $421m, most now due within four years. The Times reported: “Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.”

Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressman from Texas, told MSNBC the Times report “reveals what many people have suspected, which is the larger point that Donald Trump is a fraud, that he’s not what he claims to be.

“He claims to be a successful, deal-making businessman who built himself up from the ground and his tax records reveal that he’s actually the opposite. He’s basically a deadbeat who doesn’t pay much in taxes.”

Indeed, Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years the Times examined. In 2016 and 2017, his tax bill was just $750 – far less than almost every US citizen.

It pointed to a wider story about tax avoidance by the wealthy elite.

Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator, tweeted: “He knows better than anyone that there’s one set of rules for the wealthy and giant corporations and another for hardworking Americans – and instead of using his power to fix it, he’s taken advantage of it at every turn.”

It it tempting to see this as terminal for Trump in the November election against Joe Biden. But we have been here many times before. The same was said after the release of an Access Hollywood tape in October 2016, where Trump was heard bragging about sexual assault.

It is also worth remembering what happened in the first presidential debate against Hillary Clinton. The Democratic candidate suggested that perhaps Trump was not releasing his tax returns because he had paid nothing in federal taxes.

He interrupted and said: “That makes me smart.”

There were howls of outrage and prophecies that Trump must be doomed. Yet perhaps that remark resonated with some voters who reckoned that given the chance, they too would delight in getting around the rules in order to save a few bucks.

Some of the rampant enthusiasm at Trump’s rallies just possibly comes from people who see themselves in him.

When Trump grumbles bitterly about Barack Obama winning the Nobel peace prize while his own nomination received scant coverage, it seems to strike a chord with anyone in the crowd who feels forgotten, neglected or passed over.

When Trump presents the story of a self-perceived “outsider” who does not talk like the educated elite yet still made it rich and married a model, these supporters seem to embrace the idea of the blue-collar billionaire as one version of the American dream.

There are also large chunks of Trump’s cult who pay little attention to the New York Times or Twitter as it is.

Trump’s tax affairs have been reported before – regarding the family business, for one Pulitzer prize-winning example from the Times, from October 2018. But the new Times investigation raises further, even more damaging questions.

In his first two years as president, Trump received $73m from foreign operations, including $3m from the Philippines, $2.3m from India and $1m from Turkey. In 2017 he paid $145,400 in taxes in India and $156,824 in the Philippines – but just $750 in the US.

The president has been notoriously outspoken in his praise for the leaders of the Philippines, India and Turkey.

Does Trump’s substantial income from abroad conflict with his responsibilities as president? Did he put his personal interest ahead of the American people? Did he break the law?

The Times has promised more stories to come. They won’t shake the Trump faithful, but they might chip away at enough voters to make an important difference.”

trump in his usual fashion cries “fake news”, “totally made up”…helped along by trumpTV…from FOX article by Andrew O’Reilly: “Trump calls New York Times report that he avoid paying taxes ‘totally made up’. ‘Everything was wrong, they are so bad,’ Trump said.

President Trump lambasted a New York Times report that said he paid no federal income taxes for 10 of the past 15 years, calling the story “fake news” and arguing that he paid large federal and state taxes.

“Its fake news, it’s totally made up,” Trump said Sunday during a press briefing less than an hour after the story broke in the newspaper. “Everything was wrong, they are so bad.”

According to the New York Times report, Trump, who has fiercely guarded his tax filings and is the only president in modern times not to make them public, paid $750 in taxes to the federal government the year he was elected and $750 again his first year in office.

The disclosure, which the Times said comes from tax return data extending over two decades, comes at a pivotal moment ahead of the first presidential debate Tuesday and a divisive election.

Trump, whose net worth is claimed to be in the billions, denied that he paid such a small amount in taxes.

“I’ve paid a lot and I’ve paid a lot state income taxes too,” he said.

Even before being elected to the White House in 2016, Trump was heavily criticized for not releasing his tax filing. He has claimed multiple times that he is under a routine audit by the Internal Revenue Service and will release his filings once the audit is over.

“I’m under audit,” Trump said Sunday. “They’re doing an assessment.”

A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Alan Garten, also denied to the New York Times that the president paid such a small amount of taxes – saying in a statement obtained by Fox News that Trump “has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015.”

“The New York Times’ story is riddled with gross inaccuracies.  Over the past decade the President has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government,” Garten said. “While we tried to explain this to the Times, they refused to listen and rejected our repeated request that they show us any of the documentation they purport to be relying on to substantiate their claims.”

He added: “Obviously this is just part of the Times’ ongoing smear campaign in the run up to the election.”

The New York Times did not release the copies of Trump’s tax filings they had received, saying they were protecting sources.

Fox News’ Joh Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this report.“

here’s the beginning of The New York Times article by By Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire: “THE PRESIDENT’S TAXESLONG-CONCEALED RECORDS SHOW TRUMP’S CHRONIC LOSSES AND YEARS OF TAX AVOIDANCE: The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.

Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.

The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.

The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office. It does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019. This article offers an overview of The Times’s findings; additional articles will be published in the coming weeks.

The returns are some of the most sought-after, and speculated-about, records in recent memory. In Mr. Trump’s nearly four years in office — and across his endlessly hyped decades in the public eye — journalists, prosecutors, opposition politicians and conspiracists have, with limited success, sought to excavate the enigmas of his finances. By their very nature, the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.

The New York Times has obtained tax-return data for President Trump and his companies that covers more than two decades. Mr. Trump has long refused to release this information, making him the first president in decades to hide basic details about his finances. His refusal has made his tax returns among the most sought-after documents in recent memory.

Among the key findings of The Times’s investigation:

• Mr. Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years that The Times examined. In 2017, after he became president, his tax bill was only $750.
• He has reduced his tax bill with questionable measures, including a $72.9 million tax refund that is the subject of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service.
• Many of his signature businesses, including his golf courses, report losing large amounts of money — losses that have helped him to lower his taxes.
• The financial pressure on him is increasing as hundreds of millions of dollars in loans he personally guaranteed are soon coming due.
• Even while declaring losses, he has managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by taking tax deductions on what most people would consider personal expenses, including residences, aircraft and $70,000 in hairstyling for television.
• Ivanka Trump, while working as an employee of the Trump Organization, appears to have received “consulting fees” that also helped reduce the family’s tax bill.
• As president, he has received more money from foreign sources and U.S. interest groups than previously known. The records do not reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.

It is important to remember that the returns are not an unvarnished look at Mr. Trump’s business activity. They are instead his own portrayal of his companies, compiled for the I.R.S. But they do offer the most detailed picture yet available.

In addition to the 11 years in which he paid no taxes during the 18 years examined by The Times, he paid only $750 in each of the two most recent years — 2016 and 2017.

the New York Times says more to come about “death and taxes”…more than 202,000 deaths from Covid-19 and more about trump taxes…flush the TURD November Third…

are going to clear up, put on a happy face…it’s hard these days…especially since trump and Moscow Mitch are making good on their “promise” to ram through the confirmation process for trump’s pick…Amy Coney Barrett…the Court will skew to the right big time…after Moscow Mitch refused to even give Marrick Garland a hearing…Moscow Mitch “stole” the Supreme Court Seat…along with pushing through nearly a quarter of conservative judges on the federal courts with lifetime appointments…many thought unfit or unqualified for an appointment…but Moscow Mitch was able to push through Neil Gorsuch – he ruled a corporation is a person…then pressure was brought to bear on Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy to retire and that led the way for the controversial Brett Kavanaugh…Any Barrett was on that Federalist List but trump nominated Kavanaugh instead…I guess he had predilections for a fellow sexual assaulter…but that’s another story…there’s a lot of mystery and conjecture about Anthony Kennedy and his stepping down…his son Justin Kennedy was Deutsche Bank’s lender to trump when no other bank would loan trump money because of his stiffing the other banks with his bankruptcies…and then taking the tax deductions of bankruptcy in order to not pay any taxes for years…something fishy in Denmark…and in the matter of trump tax fraud and insurance fraud…that is coming to a head right now in the New York Attorney General’s office …Eric trump is ordered to obey a subpoena to produce documents and make an appearance…Eric says he will appear, but he may renege…that’s a “wait and see”…from the Guardian article of seven months ago, by Julian Borger: “Book reveals Trump effort to persuade Justice Kennedy to step aside for Kavanaugh: New book Dark Towers tells of how family coordinated charm offensive to convince ageing supreme court justice to retire.

The Trump family carried out a “coordinated White House charm offensive” to persuade Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote on the supreme court, to retire and clear the way for Brett Kavanaugh, according to a forthcoming book.

In Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction, David Enrich, the finance editor of the New York Times, describes how the German bank became the last major financial institution willing to lend to Donald Trump’s repeatedly defaulting business empire.

Long before Trump ran for the White House, Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin, worked as an investment banker at Deutsche. Enrich describes how he developed a relationship with Trump, his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, helping to finance real-estate deals no other bank would touch because of Trump’s record of failing to pay his debts to lenders, contractors and business partners.

“Even Trump’s friends would go to considerable lengths to avoid lending him money,” Enrich writes, adding that virtually the only person who would loan money to Trump was his father, Fred, who is widely known to have repeatedly bailed out his son.

Justin Kennedy was part of the US branch of Deutsche Bank from 1998 to 2009. Drawn to Trump’s risk-taking and glamour, he became a Trump confidant, sitting with the real estate impresario at the US Open tennis or in Manhattan nightclubs, and chaperoning huge loans to finance Trump’s real estate spending sprees.

Kennedy, who ran the bank’s commercial real-estate team, continued to lend to Trump even though Deutsche clients had suffered severe losses when Trump’s casino business collapsed and he declared bankruptcy.

After Kennedy set up his own finance and property firm in Florida, Enrich writes, he continued to help other members of the Trump family – Ivanka, Kushner and Donald Trump Jr – arrange financing for projects in New York. The New York Observer, which was owned by Kushner, put Kennedy on a list of the 100 most powerful people in New York real estate.

Once Trump was in office, he went out of his way to congratulate Justice Kennedy on his son, calling him a “special guy” and saying how much his own children loved him.

“Trump’s flattery,” Enrich writes, “was part of a coordinated White House charm offensive designed to persuade the ageing justice – for years, the court’s pivotal swing vote – that it was safe to retire, even with an unpredictable man in the Oval Office.”

Dark Towers describes how Ivanka Trump befriended the judge, sitting next to him at an inaugural lunch, regaling him with accounts of her close friendship with his son, then visiting the elder Kennedy at the supreme court, bringing her five year-old daughter to hear a case about arbitration agreements.

When Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement in June 2018, it gave Trump an opportunity to tip the court right with his nomination of Kavanaugh, in turn solidifying support among conservatives otherwise sceptical about Trump’s character.

Enrich writes that having helped to stabilise Trump’s business, Deutsche Bank now “indirectly” helped to stabilise his “floundering presidency”.

Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank was much discussed during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.

Enrich points to the separate relationships Deutsche Bank and Trump had with a Kremlin-linked Russian bank, VTB, suggesting: “Perhaps this was more than a coincidence.”

But he provides no direct evidence to support suspicions that funds supplied by Deutsche Bank to Trump over two decades came from Russian sources, and also notes that Deutsche executives deny any such direct financial relationship.

Rather, Enrich portrays the bank’s investments in Russia and in Trump as both being symptoms of a reckless investment culture and a pursuit of prestige, with insufficient checks from senior management and an outdated and fragmented computer data system.

Trump’s supporters inside the bank have also argued he had a relatively low overall debt burden, and that his real estate purchases were fundamentally sound investments.

Justin Kennedy did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

In a statement, Deutsche Bank said: “While elements of the narrative seem to be exaggerated to fit into a storyline, we have long acknowledged and sought to learn from our historical shortcomings.”…and lest we forget…from NBC News article by Allan Smith: “Deutsche Bank employees reportedly flagged suspicious transactions involving Trump and Kushner: Tammy McFadden, a former Deutsche Bank employee, said she reviewed transactions that involved Kushner’s company and Russians in the summer of 2016.

Anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank flagged multiple transactions involving Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, from 2016 and 2017. Those specialists recommended the activity be reported to the federal government’s financial crimes unit, The New York Times reported Sunday.

But top executives at the global financial giant rejected that advice, current and former employees told The Times.

The transactions that came under review “set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity,” five current and former Deutsche Bank employees told The Times. Those transactions were then reviewed by the bank’s compliance staff, who prepared suspicious activity reports that they felt should be sent to the U.S. Treasury Department.

Those reports were never filed, The Times reported, adding that the nature of the transactions was unclear, though at least some of them involved foreign entities or individuals, which raised red flags with bank employees. The Times noted that those red flags “did not necessarily mean the transactions were improper.”

Over the past few years, Deutsche Bank has been punished by both U.S. and European authorities for its role in money laundering schemes, paying hundreds of millions in fines as a result. The bank has a substantial relationship with Trump, as it was the only major financial institution to continue lending to Trump after he went through a financial downturn in the 1990s. Deutsche Bank lent Trump and his businesses more than $2.5 billion and, when he became president, the bank held more than $300 million in Trump’s debt.

“We have increased our anti-financial crime staff and enhanced our controls in recent years and take compliance with the (anti-money laundering) laws very seriously,” Kerrie McHugh, a Deutsche Bank spokeswoman, said in a statement. “An effective (anti-money laundering) program requires sophisticated transaction screening technology as well as a trained group of individuals who can analyze the alerts generated by that technology both thoroughly and efficiently.”

“At no time was an investigator prevented from escalating activity identified as potentially suspicious,” she said. “Furthermore, the suggestion that anyone was reassigned or fired in an effort to quash concerns relating to any client is categorically false.”

Tammy McFadden, a former anti-money laundering specialist at Deutsche Bank who reviewed some of the transactions, told The Times that she was moved to a different department at the bank after she raised the concerns before she was fired last year.

“You present them with everything, and you give them a recommendation, and nothing happens,” McFadden told The Times. “It’s the D.B. way. They are prone to discounting everything.”

In 2016, McFadden reviewed a series of transactions involving Kushner’s real estate company, Kushner Companies, that were flagged by the bank’s software system. McFadden told The Times that she found that money had moved from the real estate company to Russians and felt the transactions needed to be reported to the Treasury Department — particularly as Deutsche Bank had come under intense scrutiny for its involvement in Russian money laundering schemes.

But bank managers in New York felt McFadden’s concerns were unwarranted and did not send a report to the federal government, employees told The Times.

Then, after Trump became president, an internal anti-financial crime team reviewed the president’s transactions and “produced multiple suspicious activity reports involving different entities that Mr. Trump owned or controlled,” three former bank employees who saw the reports told The Times.

The reports involved Trump’s LLC’s and the now-defunct Trump Foundation. But, as The Times reported, the bank chose not to file those reports as well.

Trump responded to the story in a lengthy series of Monday tweets. The president accused news outlets of “writing phony stories about how I didn’t use many banks because they didn’t want to do business with me.”

“WRONG!” Trump continued. “It is because I didn’t need money. Very old fashioned, but true. When you don’t need or want money, you don’t need or want banks. Banks have always been available to me, they want to make money.”

Trump added, “Now the new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn’t need banks.”

“But where did he get all of that cash?” Trump wrote. “Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don’t need banks, but if I did they would be there…and Deutsche Bank…..was very good and highly professional to deal with — and if for any reason I didn’t like them, I would have gone elsewhere….there was always plenty of money around and banks to choose from. They would be very happy to take my money. Fake News!”

Congress and the New York attorney general are investigating Trump’s relationship with the bank and have subpoenaed the financial institution for records related to the president, his family, and their businesses. Deutsche Bank has begun turning over documents to the New York attorney general, while Trump and his family last month sued Deutsche Bank to block it from producing records to House Democrats.

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization told NBC News, “We have no knowledge of any ‘flagged’ transactions with Deutsche Bank,” adding that the company has “no operating accounts with Deutsche Bank.”

Emily Wolf, general counsel for Kushner Companies, said, “Any allegations regarding Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Kushner Companies which involved money laundering is completely made up and totally false.”

House Democrats quickly highlighted the report.

“As more and more damning evidence against @realDonaldTrump comes into public view, it becomes clear why he is hiding information from the American people and blowing off Congress,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., tweeted. “If Congress cannot gather evidence, we need to seriously consider an impeachment inquiry.”

“This report makes Congress’s investigations of Trump’s shadowy finances more pressing,” Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., tweeted. “The bank has even more questions to answer and Congress needs to hear from this whistleblower.”…( This article was from May 19, 2019 )…

apparently the NY Attorney General investigation is coming to a head…as well as the Southern District’s investigations….trump’s “fake” tax and insurance fraud…flush the TURD November Third…we’ll have to see what happens if the hypocritical Republicans ram this confirmation through…it’s imperative…flush the TURD November Third…

then maybe grey skies will clear up…like today for a little bit of the time…just enough for me to take a 1.7 mile walk around the neighborhood and around the train station under cover if it decided to rain again…found a penny…

really?…no, it doesn’t matter that it’s Friday…although it’s the day I water my plants…don’t ask me the date however…I have no clue…I do know it’s September…coming to an end, I believe…September!…the end of Summer… Labor Day…school begins…all those things happened but we are in a pandemic…I didn’t see the ocean this summer…school started but virtually, only after school openings became a disaster…my granddaughter’s birthday is September 2…my sister and brother-in-law’s anniversary is September 18…49th this year…my sister always knows how old Phillip is…we left him with Nancy’s Mother…he was a month old…Phil and his grandmother bonded…I think secretly he was her favorite…or maybe it was her first, Andrew ( who died last December ) and her last, Phillip…that’s another story…we also passed the first day of Fall…that was September 21…we’re five days into Fall aka Autumn…can Winter be far behind?…I fear so…especially during the pandemic…we’ll all be in our homes…no more walks outside… I’ve been walking every day this week…getting my time outside while the “sun shines”…I’ve been pushing myself to go out and walk…mainly because I’m so sick and tired of the horrible news…”say her name”…put me over the edge this week…Breonna Taylor…”say her name”…such injustice happened here…her life doesn’t matter to that attorney general of Kentucky…will we see the transcript of his “pitch”…”say her name”…was her name even mentioned in his “pitch”…we don’t know, but I can guess that he did not “say her name”…it sure seems like it…protesters have been in the streets of our cities…and “no knock warrants” banned in Louisville, Kentucky…too little, too late for Breonna Taylor…that attorney general was Moscow Mitch’s protege…and he’s up for re-election…I hope his number is up and well as Moscow Mitch…I hope his number is up too…and I don’t doubt that attorney general was doing Moscow Mitch’s bidding…because black lives don’t matter to Moscow Mitch…only power and money matter to Moscow Mitch…and of course…that’s trump’s profile…money first and now he’s feeling his oat with power…no morals, no shame, no respect for law and order…no respect for our Constitution…no respect norms or traditions… he mows over all those cherished things without batting an eyelash…he doesn’t care…he only care about himself…we are “suckers and losers”… because to him it’s only about winning…fleecing our Country and keeping power…he is now telling us he will not leave office…the only way he will lose is that the system is rigged…throwing everyone in a tizzie…he thrives on chaos…and instead of talking about the 202,000 dead for coronavirus…trump lies and people die…or talking about the economy…his ads tells us that he’s built the greatest economy and he will do it again…never mind about the millions out of work…trump lies and people die…trump lies and millions will lose their healthcare…he’s been bringing out his healthcare plan for three and a half years now…you know, the cheaper, better one…that protects pre-existing conditions that he’s in court right now trying to strip away from the Affordable Care Act…and with his new Supreme Court pick…this woman who has already told us she didn’t agree with Justice Roberts when he upheld the Affordable Care Act…and she will surely overturn Roe v Wade… and all we are talking about is trump refusing to leave office…he signs an executive order telling insurance companies they have to protect pre-existing conditions…not worth the paper it’s signed one…the insurance companies will laugh in our face…he’s says he’s sending aid to Puerto Rico… and telling us his health plan is coming…tomorrow…and tomorrow never comes…he’s trying everything he can…because he knows he’s losing…they reason he will never concede…he will never give up the power…and I am scared…we have to get him out…flush the TURDs November Third…and get those enabling Republicans out as well…the Republicans were no where to be seen as Ruth Bader Ginsberg lay in state…the first woman so honored…and the first Jewish person to be so honored…Associate Justice Stephen Breyer named RBG a woman of valor, a Rock of Righteousness who left the world a better place…”you think Oh Dear, then you think Thank You, Thank You…and Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt’s eulogy said RBG “makes history again as the first woman and the first Jewish woman to lie in state.”…she called RBG a “our prophet, our North Star and our strength, for so very long toiling for all of us”…now she could rest…it was a moving service, tearful… an emotional service…Rabbi Holtzblatt told us there was “a framed piece of art in Justice Ginsburg’s chambers that said tzedek, tzedek tirdof, “Justice, justice you must pursue.”…and her “dissents were not cries of defeat—they were blueprints for the future.”…all of the days of your life you must pursue justice.”…rest in peace RBG…

thank God it’s Friday…I don’t know why however…except we are closer to the first debate…next week…and we are that much closer to November Third…when we will flush the TURD November Third…

trump, wearing a mask, along with Melania went to “pay his respects” to RBG…as soon as the throngs realized her was there…he must have been whisked into the Supreme Court by the back door, the summarily booed and jeered and met with chants of “VOTE HIM OUT!”…the Washington Post wrote “For a brief moment, trump comes face-to-face with political reality.”…when he was asked later about the booing, his ego too large to admit the reality…he made one of his fifteenth lie for the day, speaking for himself and Melania that they couldn’t hear what was chanted “Well I think that was just a political chant, I couldn’t — we could hardly hear it from where we were. Somebody said there was some chanting, but they were right next to the media. But really couldn’t hardly hear too much. We heard a sound, but it wasn’t very strong.”…but Kayleigh McEnany was able to say that the booing was “appalling” and “disrespectful”…perfect words to describe her boss whom she lies for daily…I guess someone heard it…actually everyone heard it except for trump and speaking for Melania, her too…to add to his woes and reality…his niece Mary Trump of book fame, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man…in the trump family charity does not begin at home…she filed a lawsuit today alleging trump, his sister and brother “fleeced Mary of her multi-million dollar inheritance”…from a CNN article by Erica Orden: “Mary Trump sues President and his siblings for fraud, calling it the family ‘way of life’: President Donald Trump’s niece, filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing the President and his siblings of committing fraud in order to deprive her of her interests in the family real-estate empire built by Fred Trump Sr.In the lawsuit, filed in New York state court against the President, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry and the estate of their late brother Robert Trump, Mary Trump asserts that for the Trumps, “fraud was not just the family business—it was a way of life.”The lawsuit accuses her two uncles and her aunt, a retired federal judge, of conspiring amongst themselves and with several other parties, including a trustee appointed to act on Mary’s behalf, to give her “a stack of fraudulent valuations” and force her to sign a settlement agreement that “fleeced her of tens of millions of dollars or more.””Rather than protect Mary’s interests, they designed and carried out a complex scheme to siphon funds away from her interests, conceal their grift, and deceive her about the true value of what she had inherited,” the lawsuit says.”…as though that weren’t enough, but deservedly so, the New York Daily News printed article by Alan D. Blotcky and Seth D. Norrholm: “Say it plainly: The president is a psychopath: “Get rid of the Ballots” and “there won’t be a transfer,” said donald trump on Wednesday. This comment is a direct and dangerous expression of his anti-democratic intention. If unstopped, trump may well destroy our 244-year-old democracy.

We are psychologists, and we are convinced donald trump is a psychopath. His malignant behavior over the past our years is growing and escalating right before our eyes. trum[‘s psychopathy will change us forever if he is not stopped. This is a mental health opinion based on thousands of hours of documented behavior by this president. He breaks norms, rules, and laws with impunity. He lies, on average, 15 times a day. He peddles fake conspiracy theories and irrational magical thinking. He has been accused of sexually predatory behavior by at least 25 women. He blames, scapegoats and gaslights as easily as he breathes. He undermines the vital role of the free press because he abhors oversight and accountability. His lies and anti-scientific advice and intential downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic has led to countless American deaths. He is callous and cold and unfeeling because he has no conscience. He denigrated and humiliates anyone and everyone in his path. He has not respect for military heroes of renowned experts. He is racist and xenophobic. He incites violence and culture wars. He is obsessed with power and adoration. He is a greedy opportunist. He is corrupt to the core. Now trump is desparate to win re-election. He does not want to lose his hold on power for a number of reasons, most notably his insatiable thirst for attention. He is afraid of facing criminal charges once he leaves office. He is already essentially an unindicted co-conspirator in a campaign finance crime. He knows he is lawless and corrupt; that is why he lies about it so frequently and fervently.”…just reinforcement of what we knew already…

we have to get rid of this psychopath…as Mary Trump said “the world’s most dangerous man”…not only boo him but flush the TURD November Third…

walked 1.7 miles today…visited Pam and Ben…for “cocktails” on the patio, Ben is on his way to New Hampshire for a much needed vacation…before he moves to his new apartment starting October 1…love that family…found a penny and a nickel on the way…and always remember, flush the TURD November Third…

Breonna Taylor’s life does not matter…one officer, Brett Hankison was slapped on the hand…and it had nothing to do with Breonna’s killing at the hands of the police…Brett Hankison is being changed with “wanton endangerment” for shooting bullets not into Breonna’s apartment but to her neighbor’s…zero mention of Breonna Taylor’s name…”say her name”… Breonna Taylor was passed over…what happened today with the Grand Jury decision told the nation that her life does not matter…the other two officers, Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove, were not changed…scot-free…there has been protests around the country…”no justice, no peace”…from the BBC article: “Ms Taylor, an emergency medical technician, was at home in bed in Louisville on 13 March, when police officers entered her apartment shortly after midnight, her family says.

The Louisville Metro Police Department narcotics officers raided her home, using a battering ram to take her front door off its hinges. No drugs were found on her property and Ms Taylor had no criminal record.

Police were acting on a controversial type of search warrant – known as a “no-knock” warrant – that allows police to enter the home without warning. Police claim they knocked and announced themselves before entering, but Ms Taylor’s family and a neighbour have disputed this.

At the time, Ms Taylor was in bed with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker, a licensed gun owner, according to her family. Hearing the commotion, Mr Walker believed people were trying to break into the apartment, he later told police, and fired one shot of his pistol.

Officials say Mr Walker’s bullet struck a police officer, Jonathan Mattingly, in the leg – an injury for which he later required surgery.

Mr Mattingly and two other officers, Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove, returned fire and shot more than 20 rounds. Mr Walker wasn’t wounded but Ms Taylor was hit multiple times and died in the hallway of her apartment, lawyers for her family said.

The subsequent police report contained numerous errors, including listing Ms Taylor’s injuries as “none” and saying no force was used to enter, when a battering ram had been used.

Mr Walker was initially charged with attempted murder and assault of a police officer, but the case against him was dropped in May amid national scrutiny of the case.”…from the July 14, 2020 Lexington Herald Leader article by Morgan Eads: “A police officer fired over the death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville previously worked as an officer in Lexington, and his Lexington supervisor recommended against his reemployment.

Officer Brett Hankison was fired in June by the Louisville Metro Police Department for “extreme violations” of the department’s policies in the shooting that killed Taylor in March.

Hankison joined the Lexington Police Department in 1999 and resigned in December of 2002. He was hired by the Louisville Metro Police Department in 2003….Hankison’s supervising sergeant at the time, Patrick McBride wrote in a memo: “Based on my observations and supervision of this officer for the past calendar year, I would not recommend him for reemployment at any time in the future. Due to his actions in violation of standing orders, refusal to accept supervision, and general poor attitude toward the Division of Police and its commanding staff, I would in fact be strongly against the same.”…In Hankison’s June 23 termination letter from LMPD, acting Chief Robert Schroeder wrote that Hankison acted with “extreme indifference to the value of human life when you wantonly and blindly fired ten rounds into the apartment of Breonna Taylor.”… Specifically, Schroeder wrote that Hankison was found to have violated two aspects of standard operating procedure: use of deadly force and obedience to rules and regulations.

In addition to the allegations surrounding Taylor’s death, the Courier-Journal reported in early June that at least two women have come forward saying they were sexually assaulted by Hankison.”…nice work if you can get it…and none of these three officers were charged with Breonna Taylor’s life…although her family was awarded $12 Million for wrongful death..but no wrongdoing by the officers!…no amount of money will bring Breonna back…”say her name”…Breonna Taylor…”say her name”…

Fauci tells Rand Paul “you are not listening!”…from CNBC article by
Noah Higgins-Dunn: “No, you misconstrued that senator, and you’ve done that repeatedly in the past,”…Rand Paul compared New York’s response with that by Sweden, which decided to keep its economy relatively open. Public health experts have said that Sweden’s vulnerable population paid a price for that decision. The Kentucky U.S. senator also said New York has achieved enough herd immunity from the coronavirus and is “no longer having the pandemic.” 

“To those who argue that the lockdown flattened the curve in New York and New Jersey, the evidence argues otherwise,” Paul said, accusing Fauci of being a “big fan” of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York’s “shutdown” despite its high number of Covid-19 deaths. 

“They ( New York State ) got hit very badly, they made some mistakes. Right now if you look at what’s going on right now, the things that are going on in New York to get their test positivity 1% or less is because they are looking at the guidelines that we have put together from the task force of the four or five things of masks, social distancing, outdoors more than indoors, avoiding crowds and washing hands,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

He also said he “challenged” Paul’s claim that New York has achieved herd immunity, saying around 22% of New York’s residents have likely been exposed to the coronavirus. Sixty to 80% of a population needs to be vaccinated or develop antibodies through natural infection to achieve herd immunity, top World Health Organization officials have said. 

Earlier in the hearing, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned that more than 90% of the U.S. population “remains susceptible” to Covid-19. The coronavirus has spread across America at varying rates since it crossed U.S. shores in January, infecting as much as 15% to 20% of the population in some states and less than 1% in others, he said. “You are not listening to what the director of the CDC said,” Fauci told Paul. “If you believe that 22% is herd immunity, I believe you’re alone in that.” 

from NPR article by Vanessa Romo: “Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, whose mask-wearing habits have been publicly inconsistent and who has declined to issue a statewide mandate for face coverings, has tested positive for the coronavirus…The Republican governor’s wife, Teresa Parson, has also tested positive…Parson’s behavior has often contradicted advice from his own public health officials, appearing at functions without a mask and surrounded by people.

As recently as July 11, Parson told a group of cattle ranchers that the government should not interfere with their decision to wear or forgo a face covering. “You don’t need government to tell you to wear a dang mask,” he said, as the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader reported, “If you want to wear a dang mask, wear a mask.”…you think he’ll wear a dang mask now?…

in the corruption department – from The Hill article by Justine Coleman: “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) gave more than $6 million in contacts since September 2018 to the firm where acting Secretary Chad Wolf’s wife serves as an executive, NBC News reported Wednesday.

The consulting firm Berkeley Research Group has worked on many federal contracts but worked with DHS after Wolf was named the chief of staff at DHS’s Transportation Security Administration in 2017.

His wife, Hope Wolf, is the vice president of professional staff operations at the company.”…nice work if you can get it…then there’s Rick Perry…trump’s pick for the Secretary of Energy, remember while running for president in that field of I can’t remember how many in the 2016 presidential campaign, Perry couldn’t remember the name of that department he would head…he famously forgot the name of the Department Of Energy as the third federal department on a list of those he would abolish if elected…we know he resigned after being embroiled in the trump/Ukraine scandal…he had been of the board of  Energy Transfer Partners….resigned to be Secretary of Energy…brokered a $20 Billion deal with Ukraine for Energy Transfer Partners…resigned as Secretary of Energy and then goes back to board of Energy Transfer Department…then we have Ron Johnson, Republican Senator from Wisconsin getting information from a Russian conduit of Russian/Putin propaganda ( told to Johnson by the CIA as such ) to hurt Biden…from Associated Press: “Two Republican-led Senate committees issued a politically charged report Wednesday alleging that the work Joe Biden’s son did in Ukraine constituted a conflict of interest for the Obama administration at a time when Biden was engaged in Ukraine policy as vice president, but it offered no support for President Donald Trump’s long-running claim that the Democratic presidential nominee improperly pressed for the firing of the country’s top prosecutor to protect his son.

The report did not implicate Biden in wrongdoing, saying only that his son Hunter “cashed in” on his father’s position by joining the board of a Ukrainian gas company. The document says that work created conflict-of-interest concerns, including among two Obama administration officials, but acknowledged that it was “not clear” that Hunter Biden’s paid board position had an impact on U.S. policy with Ukraine.

Biden’s campaign immediately panned the report, released six weeks before the presidential election, as an effort by an ally of Trump’s to damage his election opponent. The campaign said the investigation was founded on “a long-disproven, hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory” and, even before the report was released, issued a detailed statement aiming to rebut point-by-point allegations that it said had long been debunked by media organizations as well as by U.S. and Ukrainian officials.”…get rid of that guy too…he’s the senator from Wisconsin with egg on his face…

trump has made $1.9 Billion from his presidency…no wonder he wants to become the dictator…this from a new book, Dan Alexander’s new book, White House, Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business…from NPR article by Dave Davies: “Past occupants of the White House have placed their business holdings into a blind trust. Not President Trump.

Forbes magazine investigative journalist Dan Alexander has pored over business records, mortgage documents and government reports — and even staked out some Trump properties — to assemble a detailed picture of the president’s business interests. He says the president has broken a number of pledges he made about how he would conduct business while in office.

“One of [the pledges] was that he was going to do no new foreign deals, and he ended up doing foreign deals anyways,” Alexander says. “Another one [was] that he was going to have outside ethics advisers review all new transactions that were coming into his business. That did not happen.”

As for Trump’s suggestion that he would donate all profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury? Alexander says that hasn’t happened either.”…which brings us to trump today – “get rid of the ballots…and there won’t be a transfer of power”…trump won’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power…this should knock you out of your socks…from Atlantic article by Barton Gellman: “The Election That Could Break America: If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?”…( if trump refuses to acknowledge the election results and throws us into chaos and resorting to the courts to use the Republican held legislatures to name their own electors who favor trump foregoing the will of the people…trump’s allies are already talking about this in Pennsylvania…voters beware…we are in deep dooty…)

“Something has to give, and many things will, when the time comes for casting, canvassing, and certifying the ballots. Anything is possible, including a landslide that leaves no doubt on Election Night. But even if one side takes a commanding early lead, tabulation and litigation of the “overtime count”—millions of mail-in and provisional ballots—could keep the outcome unsettled for days or weeks.

If we are lucky, this fraught and dysfunctional election cycle will reach a conventional stopping point in time to meet crucial deadlines in December and January. The contest will be decided with sufficient authority that the losing candidate will be forced to yield. Collectively we will have made our choice—a messy one, no doubt, but clear enough to arm the president-elect with a mandate to govern.

As a nation, we have never failed to clear that bar. But in this election year of plague and recession and catastrophized politics, the mechanisms of decision are at meaningful risk of breaking down. Close students of election law and procedure are warning that conditions are ripe for a constitutional crisis that would leave the nation without an authoritative result. We have no fail-safe against that calamity. Thus the blinking red lights.

“We could well see a protracted postelection struggle in the courts and the streets if the results are close,” says Richard L. Hasen, a professor at the UC Irvine School of Law and the author of a recent book called Election Meltdown. “The kind of election meltdown we could see would be much worse than 2000’s Bush v. Gore case.”

A lot of people, including Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee, have mis­conceived the nature of the threat. They frame it as a concern, unthinkable for presidents past, that Trump might refuse to vacate the Oval Office if he loses. They generally conclude, as Biden has, that in that event the proper authorities “will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”

The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that un­certainty to hold on to power.

Trump’s state and national legal teams are already laying the groundwork for postelection maneuvers that would circumvent the results of the vote count in battleground states. Ambiguities in the Constitution and logic bombs in the Electoral Count Act make it possible to extend the dispute all the way to Inauguration Day, which would bring the nation to a precipice. The Twentieth Amendment is crystal clear that the president’s term in office “shall end” at noon on January 20, but two men could show up to be sworn in. One of them would arrive with all the tools and power of the presidency already in hand.

The transfer of power we usually take for granted has several intermediate steps, and they are fragile.

The Interregnum comprises 79 days, carefully bounded by law. Among them are “the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December,” this year December 14, when the electors meet in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to cast their ballots for president; “the 3d day of January,” when the newly elected Congress is seated; and “the sixth day of January,” when the House and Senate meet jointly for a formal count of the electoral vote. In most modern elections these have been pro forma milestones, irrelevant to the outcome. This year, they may not be.

“Our Constitution does not secure the peaceful transition of power, but rather presupposes it,” the legal scholar Lawrence Douglas wrote in a recent book titled simply Will He Go? The Interregnum we are about to enter will be accompanied by what Douglas, who teaches at Amherst, calls a “perfect storm” of adverse conditions. We cannot turn away from that storm. On November 3 we sail toward its center mass. If we emerge without trauma, it will not be an unbreakable ship that has saved us.

Let us nothedge about one thing. Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede. Not under any circumstance. Not during the Interregnum and not afterward. If compelled in the end to vacate his office, Trump will insist from exile, as long as he draws breath, that the contest was rigged.

Trump’s invincible commitment to this stance will be the most important fact about the coming Interregnum. It will deform the proceedings from beginning to end. We have not experienced anything like it before.

Maybe you hesitate. Is it a fact that if Trump loses, he will reject defeat, come what may? Do we know that? Technically, you feel obliged to point out, the proposition is framed in the future conditional, and prophecy is no man’s gift, and so forth. With all due respect, that is pettifoggery. We know this man. We cannot afford to pretend.

Trump’s behavior and declared intent leave no room to suppose that he will accept the public’s verdict if the vote is going against him. He lies prodigiously—to manipulate events, to secure advantage, to dodge accountability, and to ward off injury to his pride. An election produces the perfect distillate of all those motives.”…read the entire article on line…and be afraid, be very afraid…this president is evil and will do anything and everything to stay and in power…first of all to stay out of jail for his corruption and tax and insurance fraud and tax evasion…secondly, to keep that money folding into his coffers…be afraid, be very afraid…let us not forget this monster was impeached…not that that matters, thanks to the enabling Republicans…

RBG lies in state at the Supreme Court guarded by her numerous law clerks…all adoring their mentor…from there she will lie in state at the nation’s capital…rest in peace RBG…

as another worst day comes to an end…I’m angry and worried…anyone of us could be next…the police can just break into your home and bang…that’s it…I heard today, the Klu Klux Klan and police go hand in hand…the police was formed to go after runaway slaves…black and brown people get no justice…I fear our Country is going to hell under this administration…Pam suggested a good long walk…I walked a 2.5 mile walk today ( found 2 pennies )…further than I have walked in a long time…trying to walk off my anger for Breonna Taylor…and worried about our Country…Breonna is not resting in peace…her life taken and seems to not have mattered…woe is us…while trump sides with the officers in his white supremacist fashion… flush the TURD November Third…

that what Cindy McCain said about Joe Biden…she endorsed Biden…and we all know the disdain with which trump treated John McCain…a hero of the Viet Nam War…the war that bone spurs trump got out of service to his country…Cindy McCain isn’t the only Republican who has endorsed Biden… they number in the hundreds and they come out for Biden daily…all those “disgruntled former employees” who have left the trump administration that have come out for Biden…they know first hand what a wretch trump is…what a fraud…what a crook…what a liar…

on Rachel Maddow this evening she has been chasing a story since April… the CDC’s recommendations for the Smithfield meat processing plant in South Dakota were watered down…more take it if you want, no pressure…and this particular plant had hundreds of cases and deaths within this plant…as did other meat processing plants in this country…all opened by trump’s essential workers executive order…the plant was given CDC recommendations that turned out to be bogus…the CDC changed “the language on its own coronavirus safety protocols for a South Dakota Smithfield meat processing plant to make the language more optional on orders from CDC Director Robert Redfield’s office.”…the original version with teeth was dated April 21, 2020, the changed version was dated April 22, 2020…the second version took out all the things the plant was to do to stem the tide of the pandemic which eventually killed a large number of workers…the real version starts and finishes “This memorandum provides observations and recommendations based on our visits on April 16 and April 17, 2020 and conversations with plant management and the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Union ( UFCW ) local president…the changed version starts out the same way but goes on with “The recommendations in this memorandum are steps the Smithfield Foods may want to consider implementing to address we identified at the plant. These recommendations discretionary and not required or mandated by the CDC.”…all through the report language was used like…you should do this if feasible or if possible…the original version read “Specifically ask employees about recent history of fever in addition to the symptoms ( e.g., cough or shortness of breath )”… the revised report adds at the beginning of the sentence “If possible, specifically ask employees about recent history of fever in addition to the symptoms ( e.g., cough or shortness of breath )”… another “Employees who are ill should stay home, and not work or be allowed in the workplace.”…the revised version “Employees who are ill should stay home, if possible.”…the real version had gone through all the levels of sign-off and was good to go to South Dakota Department of Health…the watered down version was sent to all meat pacing plants…and the meat packing industry drafted the executive order to keep plants open…which trump signed…the foxes in the hen house…the lobbyists…and the CDC’s director…Dr. Redfield acquiesced to pressure from the trump administration…Redfield let this happen…letting this interference happen… that he gave the order to participate in the degrading of that agency and having its scientific work undercut and it’s reputation and authority torn up…that industry has seen hundreds of thousands infected and hundreds who have died…the CDC could have stopped it and they didn’t…we see that acquiescence with the recent report about airbourne transmission…that the “CDC abruptly removes guidance about airborne coronavirus transmission, says update ‘was posted in error'”…and if you believe that!…from CNN “A federal official familiar with the situation said there was no political pressure involved in the change.”This was totally the CDC’s doing,” the official said. “It was posted by mistake. It wasn’t ready to be posted.”

Biden is a good and honest man…not doubt about it…at the same time Putin is orchestrating Biden’s denigrating…the C.I.A. reasserts that Putin is still at it…and we know there is no low to this administration…today, when trump was asked why he had not said anything about the 200,000 dead from the virus…he turned away and ignored the question…asking for another question…flush the TURD November Third…

Sunday morning the National Cathedral on Wisconsin Avenue rang one of it’s bells, the Bourdon Bell, 200 times…once for every 1,000 people, once for every 1,000 of our loved ones who have lost their lives to this pandemic running rampant in out Country…”trump lied, 200,000 died”…running rampant through the failure of trump to raise to the occasion of leading…a failure of protecting we the people…”trump lied, 200,000 died”…a failure to his oath of office…”trump lied, 200,000 died…this is a huge power grab by Moscow Mitch, that a minority rules the majority…never mind about the 201,000 coffins in the corner…”the elephant in the room”…that a minority forces it’s will on the will of the majority…that a minority also throws it’s oath of office to the wind…our Democracy’s number is up…the Republicans have sworn their loyalty to one man…not to the Constitution…they have sworn their loyalty to the cult of personality of a malignant narcissist…they have sworn their loyalty a liar who has cost over 201,000 lives of our loved ones…a manifestly horrible liar…the rush to appoint a judge to the Supreme Court has given trump another thing to “talk” about other than the pandemic… which trump talks about “in the past”…although the pandemic is surging in the majority of states…and trump’s followers refuse to wear a mask…that simple guard against spread of the virus…in an Ohio rally for trump his followers booed the Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted for promoting mask wearing…masks with trump on them!…trump has eroding the trust in American institutions… eroded the trust of the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration…and eroded the trust of our elections…eroded out trust in the rule of law…Moscow Mitch doesn’t care if he seems corrupt and dishonest…as he plows through to push a vote to a replacement for RBG on the Supreme Court bench…his sole reason for the power grab without shame or remorse…to overturn the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare…during a pandemic…to take away healthcare from over 20 million…and now the over 6 million, like me, who have recovered from Covid-19 who now have a pre-existing condition…and overturn Roe v Wade…and to mention climate change, clean air, clean water, unions…LGBTQ rights…more dark money in campaigns…any safeguards for the little man…for we the people…and eventually to throw the election to trump who says “if he doesn’t win, the system is rigged”…and beware of social security and medicaid and medicare…all this without any regard or respect for RBG…and trump this morning on trump TV calling into question and basically calling RBG’s granddaughter, Clara Spera, a liar…that RBG wrote her dying fervent request…“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”…Clare McCaskill’s tweet:

“Claire McCaskill@clairecmc·18h So just when you think he is lower than a snake’s belly, he manages to go lower. He called Justice Ruth Badger Ginsberg’s granddaughter a liar on national television this morning. Let’s go grandmothers. Get busy and vote these fools out. #womenvote“

trump saying it “probably” came from Schumer, and Pelosi and Adam Schiff…Nancy Pelosi says we must not agonize but organize…trump has ignored the science pushing his agenda…to altogether take over the government…he must win at all costs his re-election…to stay out of jail, no longer having that mantle of “a sitting president cannot be indicted”…we see that trump could face tax fraud investigation…the Daily Beast article by Patricia Kelly Keo: “The Plot Thickens: Manhattan DA Says Trump Could Face Tax Fraud Investigation: For the first time, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has asserted it has grounds to investigate President Trump for tax fraud. The office of Cyrus Vance, which has been investigating the president’s business dealings for over two years, said in a new filing that news reports and public testimony justified a grand-jury inquiry for several crimes, including insurance fraud, falsification of business records, and tax fraud. “Even if the grand jury were testing the truth of public allegations alone, such reports, taken together, fully justify the scope of the grand jury subpoena at issue in this case,” the filing reads. Last year, Vance’s office issued a subpoena seeking eight years worth of Trump’s tax returns. A federal appeals court earlier this month granted a stay order request delaying the release of the returns as Trump appeals a lower court decision that allowed the subpoena to be enforced. The ongoing saga began with an inquiry about the president’s hush-money payments to alleged mistresses.”…we are in such a mess…and like Nancy Pelosi said we have to organize…not agonize…even though that is tough to do…Steve Schmidt of The Lincoln Project tweets:

“Steve Schmidt@SteveSchmidtSES·Sep 19Do Not Be Afraid. Do Not Tremble. Do Not Waiver. Do not doubt either the goodness of our people or the possibilities for our future. Do not let small men with tyranny and malice in their heart (@realDonaldTrump) or hypocrites with no core (@VP) make you afraid for our future 1.8K23.8K62.3K
Steve Schmidt@SteveSchmidtSES·Sep 19 or of your countrymen and women. Do not let the fascists, racists and conspiracy theorists make you afraid of your neighbors or the strangers who could be your friend. We should all be grateful that we have been chosen by this rancid and dangerous hour to stand up and fight. 743.5K18.2K
Steve Schmidt@SteveSchmidtSES·Sep 19 What we do now matters. Our Capitol is occupied by a cabal of small and low men and women who have betrayed all of us, the American experiment, their oaths and basic decency in service of a corrupt and malignant cult of personality that is vandalizing our principles, ideals, 633.8K18.2K

Steve Schmidt@SteveSchmidtSES·Sep 19 Inheritance, future and fundamental goodness. 200,000 of our country men and women are dead. At least 150,000 of them could be alive but for Trump’s lethal lying and the immoral; supine complicity of his collaborators and enablers. Let us resolve to rise up and strike down 433.2K16.5K

Steve Schmidt@SteveSchmidtSES·Sep 19Trumpism. Let us put it down with righteous anger and fury. Let us resolve to never let this happen again. Let us do our duty as American citizens. Let us be conscious that we are called to safe action when we consider the blood, sacrifice and courage of ordinary people who 433.1K16.4K

Steve Schmidt@SteveSchmidtSES·Sep 19 Stood their ground on a field in Lexington and Gettysburg. The men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and dropped from the skies over France to crush fascism are smiling at our cause. The men and women who taught the world the meaning of the words “human dignity” as they…( I sorry the thread ends )…Steve Schmidt has said “Trump Is A ‘Dime Store Slurring Mussolini’”…

I again slept a lot today…escaping again…Pam brought me a dinner of shrimp scampi and broccoli…it was pretty yum…food for my body and soul…thank you Pam…

Ruth Bader Ginsberg will lie in state at the Supreme Court and then the Capital, she will be the first woman in our history to lie in state at the nation’s Capital…

again I ask and answer – “For whom the bell tolls…it tolls for thee”…

right now in our politics, it’s where we are, up Schitt’$ Creek…it is all about money and it’s partner, power…and the title of the Outstanding Comedy Series, it’s final season…in the Prime time Emmy Awards…from Wikipedia: Schitt’s Creek set a record for the most Emmy wins in a single season for a comedy series. It’s also the first time the entire nominated cast of a comedy series received a win for each of the main players in a single season. At the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards, the series’ final season won Outstanding Comedy Series. For their roles, Eugene Levy won Outstanding Lead Comedic Actor, Catherine O’Hara won Outstanding Lead Comedic Actress, Dan Levy won Outstanding Supporting Comedic Actor, and Annie Murphy won Outstanding Supporting Comedic Actress. Dan Levy also won for Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series with Andrew Cividino.  Schitt’s Creek set a record for the most Emmy wins in a single season for a comedy series. It’s also the first time the entire nominated cast of a comedy series received a win for each of the main players in a single season.”…and in the Drama department…HBO’a Succession, based on the Rupurt Murdoch family and media empire was Outstanding Drama Series…and for it’s writing and directing…and Lead Actor for Jeremy Strong…also a big winner was HBO’s Watchman for Outstanding Limited Series, and the Limited Series Acting Emmys for Regina King and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II…Zendaya won for Lead Actress in a Drama for Euphoria, another HBO series…Zendaya became the youngest woman to win that Emmy…looking Outstanding in a Giorgio Armani dress made just for her…it was outstanding…Julia sent me a full length picture…we only saw her sitting down…The Prime Time Emmys was a welcome diversion…although many winners urged us to register and vote for love and inclusion…Mark Ruffalo gave an impassioned speech for his win as Outstanding Lead Actor in Limited Series…I knew he would win for his portrayal of twin brothers, mental illness was the subject of I Know This Much Is True…all winners pointing to our leaning to liberal causes and where America was going to the hatred of Moscow Mitch and the conservatives hiding their racist, homophobic, zenophobic skirt of conservatism…I walked 2 miles today…another diversion…it was perfect weather for a walk…I try to walk 2 miles but sometimes I get too tired, but I was energized from laying low yesterday…and on my travels today… shopping at Old Navy for Phil and getting gas at Wawa and walking, I found two dimes and 6 pennies…it all starts again tomorrow…200,000 dead and trump gives himself a A+ on his coronavirus response, on Woodward’s taped conversation with trump…the battle over the Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat on the Supreme Court…she was mentioned more than once on the Emmys…it’s always shocking in a sad way those who we have lost, so far this year…Chadwick Boseman 43, Kirk Douglas 103, Carl Reiner 98, Diana Rigg 82, Regis Phibin 88, Buck Henry 89, Max Von Sydow 90, Stuart Whitman 92, Jim Lehrer 85, Hugh Downs 99, James Lipton 95, Wilford Brimley 85, Naya Rivera 33, Ian Holm 88, Fred Willard 86, Lynn Shelton 54, Jerry Stiller 92, Brian Dennehy 81, Lyle Waggoner 84, Robert Conrad 84, John Karlen 86, Terry Jones 77 and Gene Reynolds 96 ( co-creator of M*A*S*H and Lou Grant )…we’ll see this week how hypocrisy plays out…do the Republicans care?…my guess is not…there’s no shame or decency…and all along Ruth Bader Ginsberg paved the way for all women and their daughters…and basically for all men and women…let hope we have a paddle or two up Schitt’$ Creek…more importantly, flush the TURD November Third…