If the US Government is shut down, why is ICE out and about?

[Kid Berwyn]

Do they treason for free?

[Celerity]

2. MAGAt talking points for your very first post. Enjoy your stay.

[Kid Berwyn]

3. Was going to mention the traitor in the Oval Office is the biggest threat.

As pee-resident, Trump represented the most successful spy operation of all time: Putin’s insertion of an active agent into the Oval Office.



Unretouched photo in which then-President Donald Trump sends former KGB colonel Vladimir Putin a conspiratorial wink.

In his capacity as pee-resident, Trump represented an existential threat to national security as an agent working to advance the interests of Vladimir Putin. Therefore, in lieu of an investigation by the press or Congress, it would advance the national interest for the Department of Justice to investigate the troubling relationship between Boss Putin and Toad Trump. (Otherwise, without involvement by DoJ, Every Good American would want to perform a Citizen's Arrest the next time the guy is in town.)

Trump’s Top Targets in the Russia Probe Are Experts in Organized Crime

Some of President Trump’s favorite targets in the Russia probe have spent their careers in the Justice Department and the FBI investigating organized crime and money laundering, particularly as they pertain to Russia.

NATASHA BERTRAND
The Atlantic, AUG 30, 2018

Bruce Ohr. Lisa Page. Andrew Weissmann. Andrew McCabe. President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked these FBI and Justice Department officials as dishonest “Democrats” engaged in a partisan “witch hunt” led by the special counsel determined to tie his campaign to Russia. But Trump’s attacks have also served to highlight another thread among these officials and others who have investigated his campaign: their extensive experience in probing money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they pertain to Russia.

snip...

Trump’s latest obsession is with Bruce Ohr, a career Justice Department official who spent years investigating Russian organized crime and corruption—an expertise he shared with another Trump target named Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence operative who provided valuable intelligence on Russia to the State Department and the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force prior to authoring the Trump-Russia dossier in 2016. Ohr and Steele met in 2007, according to The New York Times, and stayed in touch as a result of their shared interests and mutual respect. Trump has tweeted about Ohr nearly a dozen times this month alone, complaining about his relationship with Steele and Ohr’s wife’s past work for Fusion GPS—the opposition-research firm that hired Steele in 2016 to research Trump’s Russia ties.

snip...

Trump’s fixation with seeing Ohr ousted from the Justice Department could be perceived as yet another attempt to undermine the credibility of the people who have investigated him. It could also be interpreted as an attack on someone with deep knowledge of the shady characters Trump and his cohort have been linked to, including Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob boss, and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate close to Putin who did business with Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. (Incidentally, another Manafort associate, the Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash, admitted that he only managed to be in business because Mogilevich allowed him to be, according to a leaked 2008 State Department cable.) Ohr was involved in banning Deripaska from the U.S. in 2006, due to his alleged ties to organized crime and fear that he would try to launder money into American real estate. Nearly a decade later, Ohr and the FBI sought Deripaska’s help in taking down overseas criminal syndicates.

Snip...

The president has denied having any business ties to Russia, and his dream of building a Trump Tower Moscow never materialized. But his links to Russian oligarchs and mobsters from the former Soviet Union have been documented: Millions of dollars from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trump’s developments and casinos throughout the 1990s, as the journalist Craig Unger has chronicled, as oligarchs looked for a place to hide their money in the West. The Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was once known as a hot spot for Brooklyn mobsters associated with the Russian Mafia, and quickly became the “favorite East Coast destination” of the top Russian mob boss Vyacheslav Ivankov, according to the 2000 book Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America. It was also repeatedly cited by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for having inadequate money-laundering controls.

Continues...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/trumps-top-targets-in-the-russia-probe-are-experts-in-organized-crime/569056/

So. How many Americans even know this story? Most all the people I have asked about it have no clue. And for that ignorance, I blame the Media Monopoly, AKA the mainstream press, comprised of broadcast news organizations and America's major newspapers and news magazines, such as they are.

Of course, there's more to the Trump-Putin Love Story. Trump actually invited the GRU into the Oval Office.



The photo of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and dip above was taken by TASS, the official Russian news agency. The US media were not informed about the 2017 visit. We learned about it because the Unhinged Moron himself spread the pic proudly on social media.

How many people do you know who’ve seen that picture or the one below, taken on an earlier date in the Oval Office? Again, very few.



“I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job," Trump said, according to The Times. "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off.”

"I'm not under investigation," he added.

Sources:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/10/527755991/trump-meets-with-russias-lavrov-at-the-white-house-today

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nut-job-james-comey-russia-2017-5

If we had an honest news media, ALL Americans would know Trump hosted Russia’s top spies and fired America's top counter-espionage agents specializing in catching Russian spies. Putting Trump on trial as a dirty rotten spy would change the narrative, as they say. That's where the facts lead. And that is where the next criminal investigations should begin: Trump should be in prison for espionage on behalf of Russia.

[haele]

4. They're probably exempt workers who are going to get back pay -

And were directed to open up direct deposit accounts at the credit unions or banks will front them a no-interest loan to maintain their pay until the government re-opens.
Furloughed workers that aren't except aren't allowed to come to work. Each Department has different rules as to whether they're able to be paid back (unless they're RIF'ed) or it's an administrative furlough (no payback) and becomes a gap period for pay purposes, or shutdown furlough (payback whether excepted or not).
For example, I've just been told I'm going to be an excepted furlough "worker" sometime over the next couple weeks when my primary organization runs out of FY 25 capital funds already obligated - working with no pay right before Thanksgiving - even though there is enough money to pay for my position as being part of the "necessary work category" on the books through January of next year.
The folks that are paid on OPM funds rather than project funds - the majority of the Federal workforce aren't getting paid, and risk being let go because their work can be contracted out or their Department deemed too "Woke" or too helpful to the serfs who should have made better choices rather than bother the Lords for work or assistance.

[Kid Berwyn]

6. I'm from the Serf Class

An old boss once called me a "faithful mule." I said, "I'm no mule, I'm a donkey."



Trump is using the shutdown to escape justice -- he hopes it outlasts MAGA interest in his role in the Epstein scandal.



Reminder: Jeffrey Epstein hired a 16-year old who worked for Donald J Trump.

Unsealed documents detail alleged Epstein victim’s recruitment at Mar-a-Lago

by JOSH GERSTEIN
08/10/2019

Excerpt…

The roughly 2,000 pages of records released by the Manhattan-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals also show the same woman, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, appears to have claimed she had sex with a series of prominent men — including former politicians — at Epstein’s direction while working as a staff masseuse for the investment adviser, who eventually came under investigation in 2006 for sex trafficking over his involvement with teenage girls.

The deal drew objections and a lawsuit from some of Epstein’s victims, who alleged they were illegally kept in the dark about the agreement. Earlier this year, a federal judge agreed the victims’ rights were violated. That ruling, and a fresh indictment of Epstein in federal court in New York City last month, set in motion the resignation of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who was the chief federal prosecutor in south Florida and signed off on the Epstein deal.

Snip…

In deposition excerpts made public Friday, Giuffre said she was working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago in 2000 when she was approached by Epstein’s longtime friend Ghislaine Maxwell about giving massages to the wealthy investor, who owned a mansion in Palm Beach not far from the Trump resort.

“Where in the spa were you when you were approached by Ghislaine Maxwell?” Maxwell’s attorney Laura Menninger asked at a May 2016 deposition.

“Just outside the locker room, sitting where the other girl who works there usually sits,” Giuffre replied. “I was reading a book on massage therapy. … She noticed I was reading the massage book. And I started to have chitchat with her just about, you know, the body and the anatomy and how I was interested in it. And she told me that she knew somebody that was looking for a traveling masseuse. ... If the guy likes you then, you know, it will work out for you. You’ll travel. You’ll make good money.”

Who knows about that — or the time when Epstein said, “No,” to Drumpf?

Jeffrey Epstein Accuser: When Donald Trump Eyed Me, Epstein Remarked ‘She’s Not for You’

by JERRY LAMBE
Law & Crime.org, Aug. 26th, 2019, 1:29 pm 305

In a harrowing report from the New York Times on Monday, sisters Maria Farmer and Annie Farmer divulged details of the earliest known reports to authorities of Jeffrey Epstein’s illicit sexual contact with young women and young girls. They accused both Epstein and his alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell of sexually assaulting them as early as 1996, a year before actress and model Alicia Arden filed a police report claiming that Epstein groped her.

Recounting one of her first memories of life in Epstein’s orbit, Maria Farmer said she remembered one particular interaction between Epstein and President Donald Trump, during which Epstein appeared to shoot down the future president of the United States after he allegedly ogled the 25-year-old Farmer.

Farmer was an artist who moved to New York City in 1993 to pursue a career in the arts. She said she was introduced to Epstein and Maxwell after graduating from the New York Academy of Art, both of whom took an immediate interest in the young woman. Epstein quickly offered her a position acquisitioning art and managing his townhouse entrance, which meant she frequently found herself in the palatial estate.

Farmer was in Epstein’s office when she first met Donald Trump. According to the report, Trump was “eyeing” Farmer when Epstein jumped in, telling Trump “she’s not for you.” The Times said Farmer’s mother, Janice Swain, vouched for the account of the Trump-Epstein interaction, saying her daughter detailed it to her around the time it happened.

Continues...

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/jeffrey-epstein-accuser-when-donald-trump-eyed-me-epstein-remarked-shes-not-for-you/

As Trump obeyed Epstein, we can see who called the shots in their friendship. Furthermore, the great Russian Money Laundering Business revealed their competitive nature.

Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, and a Russian Oligarch Is Peak Sleazy Corruption

And yet they're all tied to the same Palm Beach mansion.

By Charles P. Pierce
Esquire, August 1, 2019

I don't want to alarm anyone, but the Washington Post has a report that well may be a warning that we are approaching an historical singularity in our current political moment that will swallow the entire universe and leave us with nothing but cheap red baseball hats and plastic straws, as well as stick all of us with the bill for destroying the present. It involves a mansion, a Russian, the president*, and Jeffrey Epstein, which is as complete and round a ball of sleazy and corrupt energy as can be imagined.

Let us return then to the luxurious grounds of Maison de l'Amitie in beautiful Palm Beach.

In November 2004, Trump, who was starring in NBC’s “The Apprentice” at the time, declared himself intent on winning “the finest piece of land in Florida and probably the U.S.,” an estate that had been seized as part of the bankruptcy of nursing home magnate Abe Gosman. Trump said he planned to create “the second greatest house in America, Mar-a-Lago being the first” and then resell it.

Epstein was also enraptured by the property, which Gosman had purchased in 1988 for about $12 million from Leslie Wexner, the Ohio-based retail executive who was a friend and patron of Epstein’s. In contrast to Trump, Epstein seemed interested in living at the place. Harley Riedel, an attorney for Gosman, said the previous owner had filled the mansion with pricey art and “really did have in his heart that it would be nice if someone moved in and lived there.”

The auction began with an attempt by one of Epstein’s three attorneys to knock Trump out of the bidding. Attorney Andrew Kamensky argued that Trump was not qualified because he demanded that the property have title insurance or he would not close on the sale. “What I’m telling you is that Mr. Epstein will — he will close,” Kamensky said, according a transcript obtained by The Post.

Trump wasn’t in Palm Beach — his own attorney, Raymond Royce, was in the courtroom. But Trump was on the phone, and now he chimed in to defend himself. Riedel’s first notice that Trump might personally take part in the proceedings came when his voice boomed from the speakerphone. “I was sort of shocked,” the lawyer said. Judge Steven Friedman rejected Epstein’s objection. The bidding began with Epstein’s offer of $37.25 million, but he dropped out after his bid of $38.6 million was topped.

It is unclear whether Trump and Epstein were in contact after the house sale. That month, Trump left two messages for Epstein at his home in Palm Beach, according to records obtained by Vice News — the last known interaction between the two men.

OK, so two unremitting sleazeballs bidding over a piece of prime seafront property in Palm Beach is almost perfectly EpTrumpian. But the singularity is achieved in the story just a few lines later.

Continues…

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a28580523/jeffrey-epstein-donald-trump-palm-beach-mansion-russian-oligarch/

What people do with money is sickening. So sickening .



PS: Thank you for understanding, haele! Once I hoped the Pentagon and IC realize he is an asset of Putin, but that may not make any difference as Putin probably works for Bill Barr.

[RedWhiteBlueIsRacist]

5. ISIS never sleeps.

[Kid Berwyn]

8. Nor Project 2025 for the NAZIfication of America.

Harlan Crow’s dictator garden and other crimes against taste

by Tony Bravo,
Datebook/San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2023

When news of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s close, financially entwined friendship with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was revealed in a story by ProPublica, it wasn’t just the expensive gifts or luxury trips Crow gave the justice that caught my attention.

It wasn’t even the fact that the billionaire bought Thomas’ mother’s house and allows her to live there rent-free so he can one day turn it into a museum dedicated to the justice that I found most startling.

What astounded me was the extremely problematic (and very odd) collection that Crow exhibits at his Dallas estate and other properties.

I don’t mean his paintings by Renoir, Monet and Stuart, or the objects related to American history, like silver forged by Paul Revere and a helmet that belonged to President Dwight Eisenhower. It was the objects he’s collected that relate to some darker parts of history. In particular, the Nazi stuff.

Crow’s Third Reich collection is known to include an autographed copy of Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf”; Hitler’s personal linens and tableware (decorated with Nazi symbols); and two paintings by the art-school reject who slaughtered millions while chancellor of Germany.

If you’re thinking that collecting Nazi memorabilia is a total nefarious-rich-person cliche, don’t worry. It gets weirder.

On the Dallas estate’s rear lawn is an area Crow has dubbed the Garden of Evil. It holds a collection of statues of former communist dictators including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro, as well as philosopher Karl Marx and Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.

Continues…

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/art-exhibits/harlan-crow-clarence-thomas-17905145

This guy Harlan Crow owns the 6 Just-Uses of SCROTUS.

[RedWhiteBlueIsRacist]

10. Wow, i've heard of Crow, but didn't know much of anything about him.

Thanks for the article.

[Kid Berwyn]

11. YAMW. The nation is poised at becoming a NAZI Empire.

They are the Turd Reich -- billionaires and oligarchs and plutocrats and their millionaire toad hordes -- are poised to take over the planet.

Thank goodness Al Gore invented the Internet.

YAMW: You are most welcome.

[ananda]

7. The whole thing is such a sadistic turn-on for them..

I'll bet they're addicted.

[Kid Berwyn]

9. "I am the very model of a modern major sadist!"

With apologies that include animal, vegetable and mineral to Gilbert and Sullivan and zero apologies to the psychotic traitor who has zero knowledge presidential.



"What kind of psychopath poses with an infant whose parents were killed?"

It is the sort of photo politicians have long been known to favour: adorable baby, thumbs up, big smiles.

Few, however, would surely pose this way in such grave circumstances.

Donald Trump has sparked global revulsion after being photographed grinning with a two-month-old child who was made an orphan during Saturday’s mass shooting in El Paso which left 22 people dead.

The infant’s adopted parents, Andre and Jordan Anchondo, were both killed in the supermarket massacre, while he himself suffered broken bones when Ms Anchondo fell on the child to shield him from further bullets.

But when the baby, called Paul, was brought to the US president at the University Medical Center of El Paso, the 73-year-old appeared untouched by the child’s tragic plight. Both he and first lady Melania smiled for cameras, while the commander-in-chief also threw in a thumbs up.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-melania-baby-el-paso-thumbs-up-hospital-parents-mass-shooting-a9049086.html

Like Harlan Ellison put it: "I wake up screaming, but I have no mouth."