— Welcome to Trump’s latest billion-dollar scam, this time in the Middle East. Just like with his failed “Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU),” Trump, with lots of fanfare, is proclaiming that he’s achieved peace in the Middle East by brokering a deal between Hamas and Israel, with Hamas laying down their weapons and Israel withdrawing from Gaza. The only problem is that Hamas said they’d only disarm after Israel leaves Gaza first, and Israel is refusing to even comment on this deal that they apparently had nothing to do with writing. So, it’s really just fantasy fiction that Republicans think might help soften the blow at the gas pump and grocery store by telling us somehow that all the cost and deaths and depletion of our weapons stockpiles were done for a noble cause. This whole bizarre pitch came out of Trump’s Board of Peace, a make-believe United Nations that he “chairs for life” and stocked with Rubio, Kushner, Witkoff, Tony Blair, a private equity CEO, and assorted loyalists, including 28 countries that signed on with a payment to Trump’s new org of a billion dollars each and not a single board member from any of them. How do you spell G-R-I-F-T? We must elect people who treat diplomacy as real, meaningful work rather than just a photo op.
— A third of Democrats now call themselves democratic socialists, according to a new CNN poll. There’s considerable confusion, particularly in our corporate media, about the difference between people who call themselves democratic socialist and the members and positions of the Democratic Socialists of America political party, which could take on Democrats in multiple states the way the Green Party has in the past and has a platform including many things no Democrat would support. What’s going on here is that America is in the midst of a populist moment (and has been since 2008) wherein voters will elect anybody who promises fundamental change to an economic and political system they know isn’t working for them. Forty-five years of Reaganomics have gutted the middle class and five corrupt, on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court changed the rules of politics to legalize bribery so the only entities getting what they want out of Congress any more are billionaires and giant corporations (and Israel). These should be the tea leaves that elected Dems and the DNC are reading, but so many are so wed to corporate or AIPAC money that it’s going to be a real struggle over the next few years to reinvent the Party in, basically, Bernie’s and AOC’s image. But that will happen, no matter how much the “problem solvers,” Clintonistas, and hustlers like Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville protest.
— Trump wants his $100 million from the IRS and free grifting for his friends and family members for life and, by G-d, he’s going to get it. That’s the basic message coming out of the GOP right now, with Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee voting unanimously to remove a provision that would have stopped Trump’s IRS grift from must-pass budget legislation. Todd Blanche is refusing to put into writing his sworn statement to Congress that the so-called weaponization fund is dead and Trump won’t get the tax relief he’s seeking. Back in 2008, Trump claimed a deduction on his Chicago tower that he’d also claimed the previous year; this is generally called “tax fraud.” The IRS caught it and has been trying to collect the money ever since; with interest the bill is now over $100 million. With the document Blanche signed as a “settlement” with Trump, that tax bill goes away, as does every other tax liability — past, present, or future — for Donald, Melania, Uday and Qusay, Ivanka and Jared, all of their various children and other family members, and their partners in any companies they’ve started or run. They won’t even have to pay taxes at all, because the enforcement mechanism will have been neutered altogether. This is what’s holding up Trump’s nomination of Blanche to be permanent Attorney General, and word is leaking out that Cornyn and Tillis might be amenable to a deal where “only” Trump and his kids get this exception and the $1.7 billion “fund” goes away (Trump has since found other ways to pay off his supporters). As The Wall Street Journal reports, a senior White House advisor said bluntly: “The boss wants his money.” This is Putin-level corruption right in plain sight; it’s amazing there aren’t more protests and Democrats aren’t holding daily press conferences to proclaim their outrage.
— Is Trump taking Iran’s side because Putin told him to? Or to prepare us for our losing this war to Iran by saying it’s not such a big deal? At a Camp David cabinet meeting with the 13 billionaires in his cabinet and others yesterday, Trump claimed that the hack that’s hit water systems in at least 7 states wasn’t done by the government of Iran but, instead, came about because the Democratic governor of Minnesota is “incompetent.” This is nothing new for Iran: In early-2013, an IRGC general publicly claimed Iran had the “fourth biggest cyber power among the world’s cyber armies.’” On August 15, 2012, they used that power first to disable the world’s wealthiest oil company, Saudi Aramco, irretrievably destroying 30,000 computers, leaving only an image of a burning American flag on every monitor’s screen. Then they went after a 245-foot-tall, 800-foot-long dam in Oregon, the Arthur R. Bowman Dam, which backs up the Crooked River. Had they opened its floodgates fast enough, it would have wiped out the downriver town of Pineville, killing thousands. Fortunately for Oregonians, they got the wrong dam; instead of the Oregon dam, they successfully infiltrated and took control of the Bowman Avenue Dam in New York State, which reroutes a relatively small stream. In an article about the attack, Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Yadron wrote, “America’s power grid, factories, pipelines, bridges and dams—all prime targets for digital armies—are sitting largely unprotected on the Internet.” It was just a fluke that they got the wrong dam. But now Trump is saying that Iran isn’t doing this sort of thing, and there’s got to be a reason for that lie.
— “Elect a clown, expect a circus” alert! It shouldn’t surprise us that the white supremacists in the Trump administration wouldn’t know which countries are where on a map of Africa, but somebody could at least have run it past a person with Africa competence. The truly sad part is that the presentation was part of an effort to keep alive the only thing that George W. Bush ever did that was useful for anybody other than billionaires: the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR). Sad.
— Trump is asking cops to help him continue grifting with crypto. The Trump regime is pushing law enforcement groups hard to support the GOP’s new Clarity Act, which would forbid others but explicitly allow Trump and his wife to keep issuing their $TRUMP and $MELANIA “collectible” digital coins, which have already helped make them billions of dollars. Moving to help Trump and his sons profit from the crypto scams they’re running, CNN reports: “At the Justice Department, Blanche shut down some cryptocurrency criminal investigations and disbanded a group of prosecutors and investigators who focused on cryptocurrency crimes as part of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.” They also note that: “Some law enforcement groups, including the National District Attorneys Association and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, have warned that the proposed law does not do enough to ensure transparency and accountability among crypto companies.” Now Trump wants legislative relief, and Republicans are inclined to give it to him but they’re hesitating at the moment because law enforcement groups are skeptical, and Trump himself is lobbying them. Keep an eye on this one.
— FCC Chief evokes howls of laughter across the country. In an interview with Dasha Burns of Politico, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said, “I don’t view the FCC as the speech police.” His statement does not mean, however, that he’s backing away from investigating the license renewals of ABC stations that didn’t carry Trump’s election fraud speech. The speech police live on even as they deny their own existence…
— To live long, adopt these habits. “Blue Zone” residents between 70 and 101 in Sardinia don’t just share the Mediterranean diet and lots of exercise. Researchers recently did a larger analysis of them versus nearby people who shared the same eating and exercise habits but didn’t live as long and found that the longest-lived people almost universally also had positive attitudes toward life. Curiosity and optimism — both characteristics that can be learned and reinforced regardless of age — had a big effect, according to the researchers. Time to dig out your copy of one of my favorite books, Pollyanna, and get some inspiration!
Comments on Friday’s Daily Take:
The Cover-Up Has Begun: First They Put Fauci on Trial, Then They Put History on Trial
Check this map of the 1,200,000 Americans who died from COVID as Rand Paul attacks Dr. Fauci. Notice the deaths by county and the Republicans who blocked vaccines and masks and are now persecuting someone who worked so hard to save lives.
~Deepak Puri
Absolutely. Science is about arguing evidence for explaining the physical world. There has NEVER been a scientific argument for attacking the character of a person. That is politics, not science. Whether the virus originated as a natural species jump or lab creation is not the issue. Fauci NEVER said the virus was not lethal and dangerous. The clowns doing the character attacks ALL did that, and Republican MAGA maggots caused the highest mortality rates to occur to their own constituents in their own home states. They royally SUCK.
~ Ed Nuhfer
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