All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Malvolio]

Wait, when did you join the Sentry avatar club?

I was thinking about how your avatar is a close-up of mine...

[WestPhillyPunisher]

You've probably heard of Diamond and Silk, but didn't mention them. Or South Carolina's U.S. Senator Tim Scott, who seems to be on board based on his speech at the RNC.

Don King is also way into him, but they go back through decades of shady business deals where Trump Hotels and Casinos would host King's prizefights. The GOP had to tell Trump King would not appear at the 2016 RNC because it's a bad look to claim you're the "law and order" president when you're proud to have hung out with a guy who did time for manslaughter.

Oh, there's also the former cultist/conspiracy theorist who keeps appearing behind Trump at MAGA rallies, Michael The Black Man. (Don't look at me, that's what he prefers to be called.)

Both Owens and Diamond and Silk (or, as I like to call those heifers, Cut Glass and Burlap) were recently kicked off the plantation by the GOP after having outlived whatever usefulness they had to the party. Meanwhile, one could argue that CNN's Van Jones is perilously close to being a Republican suckup.

[Kirby101]

There are people represented by Samuel Jackson in Django Unchained. I cannot use such a phrase.

[Kuro no Shinigami]

You've probably heard of Diamond and Silk, but didn't mention them. Or South Carolina's U.S. Senator Tim Scott, who seems to be on board based on his speech at the RNC.
)

Oh, yeah, I remember having seen Diamond and Silk's one tweet that was retweeted by Candace Owens or Terrence K. Williams or maybe both not long ago (I can't remember which of them has retweeted their tweet, so maybe I did read both Owens and Williams retweets). Now I have checked Diamond and Silk's twitter profile. And they have posted some tweets almost interesting as Terrence's and Candace's tweets.

Those Trump supporters have written new and upcoming books.

"From The Foster House To The White House" by Terrence Williams
"Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation" by Candace Owens
Uprising: Who the Hell Said You Can't Ditch and Switch? -- The Awakening of Diamond and Silk (the book was on sale few weeks ago).

Is anyone planning to read any of their books.

There are people represented by Samuel Jackson in Django Unchained. I cannot use such a phrase.

Is "uncle Tom" the phrase you can't use?

[Tami]

Just waiting for the next shoe to drop. It seems that the traditional 'October Surprise' has been extended to September, and it seems like Trump is the one getting surprised the most.

[Kuro no Shinigami]

Both Owens and Diamond and Silk (or, as I like to call those heifers, Cut Glass and Burlap) were recently kicked off the plantation by the GOP after having outlived whatever usefulness they had to the party. Meanwhile, one could argue that CNN's Van Jones is perilously close to being a Republican suckup.

Van Jones ironically used to be Obama's ex-aide. So he switched parties, didn't he?

I have found a Black journalist named Jason L. Riley. He wrote some articles that are supposed to be unbiased but looked almost pro-Trump.

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/...ican-americans

https://www.********/articles/trumps...ng-11598394457

Riley published two books entitled "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed" (2014) and "False Black Power?"(2017)

In his book Please Stop Helping Us, Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer black college graduates than would otherwise exist. And so it goes with everything from soft-on-crime laws, which make black neighborhoods more dangerous, to policies that limit school choice out of a mistaken belief that charter schools and voucher programs harm the traditional public schools that most low-income students attend.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Oh, yeah, I remember having seen Diamond and Silk's one tweet that was retweeted by Candace Owens or Terrence K. Williams or maybe both not long ago (I can't remember which of them has retweeted their tweet, so maybe I did read both Owens and Williams retweets). Now I have checked Diamond and Silk's twitter profile. And they have posted some tweets almost interesting as Terrence's and Candace's tweets.

Those Trump supporters have written new and upcoming books.

"From The Foster House To The White House" by Terrence Williams
"Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation" by Candace Owens
Uprising: Who the Hell Said You Can't Ditch and Switch? -- The Awakening of Diamond and Silk (the book was on sale few weeks ago).

Is anyone planning to read any of their books.

Pfft! I wouldn't wipe my ass with that garbage.

[Tami]

Trump Emerges as Inspiration for Germany’s Far Right

BERLIN — Just before hundreds of far-right activists recently tried to storm the German Parliament, one of their leaders revved up the crowd by conjuring President Trump.

“Trump is in Berlin!” the woman shouted from a small stage, as if to dedicate the imminent charge to him.

She was so convincing that several groups of far-right activists later showed up at the American Embassy and demanded an audience with Mr. Trump. “We know he’s in there!” they insisted.

Mr. Trump was neither in the embassy nor in Germany that day — and yet there he was. His face was emblazoned on banners, T-shirts and even on Germany’s pre-1918 imperial flag, popular with neo-Nazis in the crowd of 50,000 who had come to protest Germany’s pandemic restrictions. His name was invoked by many with messianic zeal.

It was only the latest evidence that Mr. Trump is emerging as a kind of cult figure in Germany’s increasingly varied far-right scene.

“Trump has become a savior figure, a sort of great redeemer for the German far right,” said Miro Dittrich, an expert on far-right extremism at the Berlin-based Amadeu-Antonio-Foundation.

[worstblogever]

Just waiting for the next shoe to drop. It seems that the traditional 'October Surprise' has been extended to September, and it seems like Trump is the one getting surprised the most.

The other catch is... his campaign is going broke. Like between Parscale, the Trumps, and everyone in their orbit being grifters... in an era where Citizens United allows virtually unlimited donations from rich donors... they ran out of money. I know we're talking about the same guy who bankrupts casinos, but it's not just that he did it, it's what it means for the next 50 days or so. How do you come from down ten points when you can't afford TV or radio ads in swing states? Even if something pops up that would torpedo Joe Biden... how do you capitalize on that when you can't afford to create or run new ads?

And it's not like cable news haven't learned, "Hey, y'know what? We don't owe him free airtime when he's rambling at a podium. Cut away. CUT AWAY. He's just lying non-stop, almost faster than he can be fact-checked, so let's just summarize his remarks later. It's the responsible thing to do." Even Fox News has learned to cut away. And when he's coming up with the "dark shadows" theories, Fox would be doing him a favor to make sure he doesn't embarrass himself. When they've interviewed him lately, he's come off as completely delusional and only hamstrung himself even more... when the American people are, by and large, just sick of seeing his stupid f***ing face and hearing his stupid f***ing voice. Because we're all dying out here, and he's got nothing but blunder until it's time to tee off again, which is sadly all too frequent.

[Tami]

The other catch is... his campaign is going broke. Like between Parscale, the Trumps, and everyone in their orbit being grifters... in an era where Citizens United allows virtually unlimited donations from rich donors... they ran out of money. I know we're talking about the same guy who bankrupts casinos, but it's not just that he did it, it's what it means for the next 50 days or so. How do you come from down ten points when you can't afford TV or radio ads in swing states? Even if something pops up that would torpedo Joe Biden... how do you capitalize on that when you can't afford to create or run new ads?

And it's not like cable news haven't learned, "Hey, y'know what? We don't owe him free airtime when he's rambling at a podium. Cut away. CUT AWAY. He's just lying non-stop, almost faster than he can be fact-checked, so let's just summarize his remarks later. It's the responsible thing to do." Even Fox News has learned to cut away. And when he's coming up with the "dark shadows" theories, Fox would be doing him a favor to make sure he doesn't embarrass himself. When they've interviewed him lately, he's come off as completely delusional and only hamstrung himself even more... when the American people are, by and large, just sick of seeing his stupid f***ing face and hearing his stupid f***ing voice. Because we're all dying out here, and he's got nothing but blunder until it's time to tee off again, which is sadly all too frequent.

Trump Has Now Shifted $1.9 Million From Campaign Donors To His Business - Feb 19, 2020

Billionaire Donald Trump still has not donated a cent of his own to his 2020 campaign, opting to fund the effort with money from supporters around the country. At the same time, Trump’s private companies are continuing to charge the campaign for expenses like rent and consulting, according to the latest federal filings. That means that since January 20, 2017, the day Trump officially declared his intent to run for reelection, his campaign has put $1.9 million of donor money into the president’s private business.

“This is a man, who when he first said he was going to run for office, was saying that he was going to do this all out of his own pocket,” said Karl Sandstrom, a Democrat who served as a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission from 1998 to 2002. “And now he’s taking money from others and putting it in his pocket.”

Forbes first reported on this arrangement more than a year ago, when Trump had already shifted $1.1 million from his campaign to his business. The amount of money has continued to swell since then.

Where does Trump’s campaign money go?

In 2016 Donald Trump’s election campaign was constantly plagued by the haphazard and incompetent nature of its candidate, its strategy and its employees, from their bungling of the Iowa caucuses to Trump’s campaign manager assaulting a Breitbart reporter – and of course there are the numerous suspicious connections between members of the Trump campaign team and the Russian government.

Naturally, this hurt the campaign’s finances, and Trump has been dogged throughout his time in office by revelations about the dodgy dealings and outright crimes perpetrated on his behalf by his operatives.

One of the most notable financial scandals involved “hush money” payments by Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen to women who allegedly had sex with the candidate, and ultimately resulted in a jail sentence for Cohen.

What will make the job of journalists investigating the Trump campaign’s finances even more difficult is that Trump has taken a leaf from the famously opaque Mitt Romney campaign of 2012. Political campaigns are required to submit a lot of their financial information to government agencies such as the IRS and then FEC. Romney’s team got around that by creating an in-house production company called American Rambler Productions (ARP).

ARP was ostensibly intended to streamline the campaign’s financial outlay, but it seemed custom designed to make the flow of cash impossible to follow.

It was incorporated in Delaware, whose state laws allow for almost ridiculous levels of corporate secrecy, and little is known about where the $260 million that the Romney campaign pushed through ARP ended up.

The Trump campaign has copied the model of ARP with American Made Media Consultants (AMMC), a political consultancy established in 2018.

It claims to be an independent company, so it doesn’t have to reveal the kind of financial information that Trump’s political campaign does, but these claims stretch the truth to the point of incredulity.

AMMC only caters to one client, the Trump campaign, and was actually incorporated by Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale. So far, the campaign has funneled over $40 million though this obvious shell company. Two other similar companies founded by Mr. Parscale – Parscale Strategy and Parscale Digital – have together received about $10 million in Trump campaign funds.

It is unclear what these shell corporations are doing with the over $50 million entrusted to them, but what information we do have is disturbing.

The 2020 Trump Campaign Is Reportedly a Financial Mess

It comes as no surprise that a campaign which held a rally that was most likely the source of a large uptick of COVID-19 cases in Oklahoma and lost millions due to a failed Republican National Convention venue change would be tumultuous behind the scenes. But a report from the New York Times details just how chaotic the Trump campaign’s finances have been, particularly for a reelection effort which began the day after the inauguration.

Though the campaign raised a total of $1.1 billion since the beginning of 2019 and did not have to spend money in a primary, over $800 million, or close to 73 percent, of their funds have been exhausted. Similar to the trajectory of the president’s business career, an early excess of cash appears to have been wasted due to questionable spending. “The campaign assembled a big and well-paid staff and housed the team at a cavernous, well-appointed office in the Virginia suburbs; outsize legal bills were treated as campaign costs; and more than $100 million was spent on a television advertising blitz before the party convention, the point when most of the electorate historically begins to pay close attention to the race,” write Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman.

[Ragged Maw]

And yet, not only is half the country (Republicans) AREN'T listening, they're doing all they can to hasten the madness so they can enjoy racism, tax cuts, judge stacking and "owning the libs".

I'm actually kind of surprised that people are shocked at this, given that resentment has been "the great motivator" of our species (for better and certainly for worse) for millenia, ever since we learned how to smash each other's skulls open with rocks. All the positive messaging, speeches about love, and feel-good media in the world can only do so much to mitigate that more base aspect of humanity. I'm starting to think the trick is figuring out how to channel said negative impluses into more creative or constructive endeavors rather than how to "never get angry or think bad thoughts again", and then promote that solution on a nationwide scale. Otherwise, you may well try to invent the "happy helmet" from Ren & Stimpy at that point. And that's its own yet-to-be-opened can of worms, ethics-wise.

[ed2962]

Both Owens and Diamond and Silk (or, as I like to call those heifers, Cut Glass and Burlap) were recently kicked off the plantation by the GOP after having outlived whatever usefulness they had to the party. Meanwhile, one could argue that CNN's Van Jones is perilously close to being a Republican suckup.

With Diamond and Silk it's that Fox had to distance themselves from them because D+S were giving wrong information about Corona. I don't know why Owens wasn't at the GOP convention, but I don't they're getting rid of her. Right now she's going viral after picking a fight with Cardi B ( after other right wing pundits went viral being fake "outraged" over Cardi's "WAP" song).

[ed2962]

I wonder how many Black Americans who support Trump and Republican Party agendas, despite Trump not condemning the KKK and the Confederate flag?

The ones I know are:
Kanye West
Herman Cain
Vernon Jones
Thomas Sowell
Herschel Walker
Candace Owens
Terrence K. Williams
Ben Carson (HUD secretary)
David Clarke (sheriff)
Allen West; the Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas and friend to Herman Cain
John E. James; the one who ran for the 2018 US senate seat in Michigan, lost it and now is running in the 2020 United States Senate election in Michigan

Are there other Black supporters of Trump I haven't heard of yet?

Some of these people are sincere but others are just trying to cash in. You can make money pretending to be "fed up" with "the left/Democrats" and how they've "gone too far."

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump Has Now Shifted $1.9 Million From Campaign Donors To His Business - Feb 19, 2020



Where does Trump’s campaign money go?





The 2020 Trump Campaign Is Reportedly a Financial Mess

So, Trump is running his campaign just like he runs his businesses----like a complete screw-up. The only man who managed to bankrupt casinos is doing the exact same thing to his re-election bid, and doing so in spectacular style. If he isn't outright grifting like there's no tomorrow, he's flinging lawsuits left, right and center against anyone and everyone who pissed him off. Hell, the billable hours by his ambulance chasers must be astronomical. Still, Trump's cult won't get the clue that he's conned the unholy **** out of them, and will probably send him more money to fatten his wallet at the expense of the GOP. Needless to say, that makes me quite happy.

[Kirby101]

Is "uncle Tom" the phrase you can't use?

No, it's two words and the first one is House.