A round up of Trumpian events 🖕🍊🤡

No one in the myth listened to Cassandra, ever.

There are people who hear you; we just don’t have much power or ability to change shit on a large scale, not on our own. We need the rest of the country to wake up…

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They can just hide behind the “these are all opinion pieces” line. I’m not sure who wants to read this shit, though.

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So much this. You’re preaching to the choir here, @Wanderfound.

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For me though, it’s always good to hear, and to try to work against. I had no idea for instance that repub shenanigans included that health care scam.

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In 2016 The Wall Street Journal’s Jean Eaglesham, Mark Maremont, and Lisa Schwartz outlined a specific example of just that sort of structure: “Donald Trump owns a helicopter in Scotland. To be more precise, he has a revocable trust that owns 99 percent of a Delaware limited liability company that owns 99 percent of another Delaware LLC that owns a Scottish limited company that owns another Scottish company that owns the 26-year-old Sikorsky S-76B helicopter, emblazoned with a red ‘TRUMP’ on the side of its fuselage.” All told, the Journal reported, 15 entities were used at that point to “own” Trump’s fleet of two airplanes and three helicopters.

:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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That was a great article. I especially loved all the comments about “fake news” and such when it in fact provides a great explainer about how money laundering works on a large scale, and how similar Trump’s business dealings are to many of these schemes.

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Things have gotten so ridiculous in the White House, Adult Swim has decided that it was a good time to bring back Harvey Birdman to lampoon it

In the special, Harvey Birdman, Attorney General, Birdman is named attorney general by very fictional President Phil Ken Sebben, described as a megalomaniac billionaire.

“In his new role, it’s up to Harvey Birdman to find a way to remove president Phil Ken Sebben from office before everyone starts to worry it’s more than the ridiculous plot to an animated show,” the network said.

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Well, this wasn’t at all predictable:

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No shit. Here’s the thing that is making me insane about that:

Speaking at the U.S. Embassy opening in Jerusalem, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and his chief Mideast adviser, said Palestinians participating in Gaza border protests are “part of the problem and not part of the solution.” (CBC)

I think there is an awfully good chance that the size of these protests could have been hugely diminished and the killings avoided if only they had the sense to do avoid the fucking fanfare about the move. Don’t send Jared to make a speech about how great an idea this whole thing is. Don’t cut a ribbon. Just open the building update the website, make a small press release.

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“Part of the problem”… WTF?!? How about the fucking artifically created colonial bullshit borders? And being dickweeds about it for 50+ years now? No couldn’t possibly be that.

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This morning on NPR, they spoke to the American ambassador to Israel about the move, and it was a little bizarre. For the most part, he seemed very reasonable, talking about a 2-party solution and negotiations and such, but when the host said something about Israel being created by the UN in 1948, the ambassador went on a weird rant about Israel being created by God 3500 years ago and given to the Jews as documented in the Bible, and how the war is the fault of the Arabs. The NPR folks were like “Uh, that was unusual.”

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With regard to that part of his speech, the gaslighting* continues:

*I’d blame incompetence since the white house press office can’t even do the simple things like spelling “Norway” correctly these days, but this is way too obvious to be accidental.

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Ugh, no surprise there. I long ago gave up on wishing for anything truly investigative or off the mainstream/corporate news script from National Propaganda Radio.

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If he wanted to identify something that was “part of the problem” he probably should have went with “assholes like me making speeches like this one.”

On one hand, I can only imagine being blindsided with that kind of nonsense while speaking live. On the other hand, I feel like that’s the sort of thing you could know about before you had someone on to interview them. Surely the ambassador has made similar statements in public before. (???)

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The embassy move didn’t help, but that isn’t what these protests are about. The Israeli military has been shooting protesters by the thousands for weeks now.

This is from a month ago:

This is from three weeks ago:

This is from two weeks ago:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-protests/israelis-fire-tear-gas-warning-shots-at-palestinian-protesters-on-gaza-israel-border-idUSKBN1I50XA

Total number of protesters injured during the last month appears to be around 8,000. Mostly not killed; they’re getting picked off by snipers who have time to select their targets. Lots of leg wounds.

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Just to remind people (with regards to the Independent article), my own kid is 15. They are killing kids here.

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There was an eight month old baby amongst today’s fatalities. Her parents had left her with a relative, but the babysitter came looking for Mum when the kid wouldn’t stop crying.

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Oh my god. That’s horrible.

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Full Tilt: “NOW THE END BEGINS IS YOUR FRONT LINE DEFENSE AGAINST THE RISING TIDE OF DARKNESS IN THE LAST DAYS BEFORE THE RAPTURE OF THE CHURCH”

This is the header today:

“GOOGLE DUPLEX IS AN AI ASSISTANT BOT ABLE TO MAKE PHONE CALLS AND INTERACT WITH HUMANS WITHOUT BEING DETECTED”

Not this:

Gravity-balls-ear-to-ear-crazy-animation

Edit:

“In the Trump White House, a weekly bible study group calls its brand of faith “historical evangelicalism.” Biblical scholars say the group shares the “end of times” message of “Rapture” theologians in its statement of faith and founder Ralph Drollinger’s own published lessons.”

“The bible study group is run by Capitol Ministries, an organization with the stated mission “to teach God’s Word and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with state legislators, judges, and constitutional officers.” Capitol Ministries supporters include ten members of Trump’s cabinet, including in addition to Pompeo, labor secretary Alex Acosta and housing secretary Ben Carson according to the Capitol Ministries website. Drollinger, a UCLA basketball player-turned politician-turned-preacher, has also been holding weekly bible study groups with dozens of Congress members since 2010.”

How much of this is for show and evangelical vote? Either way, we’ve got full tilt believers in office with nothing holding them back.

Quote of the day: Christian evangelicals “don’t like Trump because they think he is holy,” explains Ziegler. “They like him because they think he’s God’s tool.”

My gawd, it’s huge.

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