A history of shadiness.

Given what has transpired over the past few days, the following article is apropos.

"In his signature book, The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump boasted that when he wanted to build a casino in Atlantic City, he persuaded the state attorney general to limit the investigation of his background to six months. Most potential owners were scrutinized for more than a year. Trump argued that he was “clean as a whistle”—young enough that he hadn’t had time to get into any sort of trouble. He got the sped-up background check, and eventually got the casino license.

But Trump was not clean as a whistle. Beginning three years earlier, he’d hired mobbed-up firms to erect Trump Tower and his Trump Plaza apartment building in Manhattan, including buying ostensibly overpriced concrete from a company controlled by mafia chieftains Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano. That story eventually came out in a federal investigation, which also concluded that in a construction industry saturated with mob influence, the Trump Plaza apartment building most likely benefited from connections to racketeering. Trump also failed to disclose that he was under investigation by a grand jury directed by the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, who wanted to learn how Trump obtained an option to buy the Penn Central railroad yards on the West Side of Manhattan.

Why did Trump get his casino license anyway? Why didn’t investigators look any harder? And how deep did his connections to criminals really go?

These questions ate at me as I wrote about Atlantic City for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and then went more deeply into the issues in a book, Temples of Chance: How America Inc. Bought Out Murder Inc. to Win Control of the Casino Business. In all, I’ve covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years, and in that time I’ve encountered multiple threads linking Trump to organized crime. Some of Trump’s unsavory connections have been followed by investigators and substantiated in court; some haven’t. And some of those links have continued until recent years, though when confronted with evidence of such associations, Trump has often claimed a faulty memory. In an April 27 phone call to respond to my questions for this story, Trump told me he did not recall many of the events recounted in this article and they “were a long time ago.” He also said that I had “sometimes been fair, sometimes not” in writing about him, adding “if I don’t like what you write, I’ll sue you.”

I’m not the only one who has picked up signals over the years. Wayne Barrett, author of a 1992 investigative biography of Trump’s real-estate dealings, has tied Trump to mob and mob-connected men.

No other candidate for the White House this year has anything close to Trump’s record of repeated social and business dealings with mobsters, swindlers, and other crooks. Professor Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, said the closest historical example would be President Warren G. Harding and Teapot Dome, a bribery and bid-rigging scandal in which the interior secretary went to prison. But even that has a key difference: Harding’s associates were corrupt but otherwise legitimate businessmen, not mobsters and drug dealers.

This is part of the Donald Trump story that few know. As Barrett wrote in his book, Trump didn’t just do business with mobbed-up concrete companies: he also probably met personally with Salerno at the townhouse of notorious New York fixer Roy Cohn, in a meeting recounted by a Cohn staffer who told Barrett she was present. This came at a time when other developers in New York were pleading with the FBI to free them of mob control of the concrete business.

From the public record and published accounts like that one, it’s possible to assemble a clear picture of what we do know. The picture shows that Trump’s career has benefited from a decades-long and largely successful effort to limit and deflect law enforcement investigations into his dealings with top mobsters, organized crime associates, labor fixers, corrupt union leaders, con artists and even a one-time drug trafficker whom Trump retained as the head of his personal helicopter service.
Now that he’s running for president, I pulled together what’s known – piecing together the long history of federal filings, court records, biographical anecdotes, and research from my and Barrett’s files. What emerges is a pattern of business dealings with mob figures—not only local figures, but even the son of a reputed Russian mob boss whom Trump had at his side at a gala Trump hotel opening, but has since claimed under oath he barely knows.

Neither Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Hope Hicks, nor Jason Greenblatt, the executive vice president and chief legal officer at the Trump Organization, responded to several emailed requests for comment on the issues raised in this article." [Source]

Yes America, your president has a history, so it's not surprising to see his friends and everyone around him going down like Michael Spinks after a Mike Tyson hook.

The only thing saving Don trump is the fact that he is president, and Mr. Mueller will not indict  sitting president. Of course he (trump) knows that, which is why he can go on FOX VIEWS and blather lie after lie to their gullible viewers. He tried to say that he was not aware of the Stormy Daniels payoff before it happened, even though we can clearly hear the audio tape of him agreeing to it before it was done. (This guy must think we are as stupid as one of his typical supporters.) And then, incredibly, he admitted to later reimbursing Cohen for the Stormy Daniels payment out of his own money.     

"Truth isn't truth." ~trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani~

Here is what I know IS true: if you are a friend of Donald trump, you might want to call your lawyer.

The bottom of the swamp.

The trump crime family is shrinking more and more with each passing day. Today, two more of his cronies felt the sting of justice, as prosecutors get closer and closer to the Don himself, Mr. trump.

"A federal jury in Virginia convicted Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, on eight felony counts on Tuesday, but the judge declared a mistrial on the 10 other charges he faced.

Manafort, a fixture in Republican politics for decades, was convicted of five counts of tax fraud, one count of failure to file a report of foreign bank and financial accounts and two counts of bank fraud. A mistrial was declared in three counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts, and seven counts of bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy.

Prosecutors built a case that Manafort for years hid millions from U.S. tax authorities in overseas accounts, spending the money to maintain a lavish lifestyle and lying to banks to generate more cash.
The trial was the first public test of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, and while the special counsel was vindicated, the victory wasn't total." [Source]

They are right, it wasn't "total", but it was more than enough. Manafort was found guilty on eight counts of the charges, and even though mistrials were declared on the other ten (he can be retried on all of them), he is still looking at eighty years in the big house with the charges that he was found guilty of.

And then there is Mr. trump's long time fixer and bag man, Michael Cohen. He pleaded guilty to a variety of crimes today, and he joins a long list of folks in trump's orbit who are now felons.

" Longtime Trump personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen agreed to a plea deal with the Southern District of New York in which he admitted guilt on eight charges and acknowledged that he had discussed or made hush payments to two women alleging affairs with Trump in order to keep damaging information from becoming public, at the direction of and in coordination with a candidate for federal office. That candidate, although Cohen didn't name him, is obviously Donald Trump.

Either of these developments could make for a disastrous week for the President of the United States, who has watched special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian 2016 election interference draw ever closer to him as it has gone along. But for both Manafort to be found guilty and Cohen to not only plead guilty but to implicate Trump in a payoff that violates campaign finance law is, literally, catastrophic for the Trump White House.

While both stories are very big deals, the Cohen plea is more important in terms of its direct impact on Trump." [Source]

Remember when all those trump supporters were shouting "lock her up" about Hillary Clinton? Well somewhere in upstate New York Hillary Clinton is laughing her ass off. 

Memo to Mr. trump: Be careful what you wish for. You wanted to be president, and now you (and those around you) must live with the consequences.    

*Pic from rollingstone.com

The streets take another one.

And now, a public service announcement from the mean streets of Philadelphia.

"When I heard the news that Kristian Marche had died, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it.

But somehow, I wasn’t as upset as I felt I should be. Especially considering I knew him personally.
Marche, a standout track athlete and Imhotep Charter grad, was killed on Aug. 13, a day before he was to leave on full scholarship to Penn State. He was shot in the head around 9:30 at night, taken to Albert Einstein Memorial Hospital, and pronounced dead at 6:30 the following afternoon.

Though we weren’t especially tight, we both ran track in Philly, so I knew him well enough to call him a friend. What happened to him was undeniably horrific and unfair. So why aren’t I as broken up about it as I should be?

Because in Philadelphia, things like this happen nearly every single day.

Young black men, people with all the potential in the world and their whole lives in front of them — people like me — are gunned down with shocking regularity.

It’s almost like I’ve grown numb to it.

Kristian wasn’t the first kid to fall victim to Philly’s gun violence, and he won’t be the last.

Out of all the people shot in Philadelphia so far this year, 15.6 percent were black males aged 15-20, according to police data. The numbers were similar last year, when black youths that age made up 14.2 percent of the 1,129 total shootings. That means one of every seven victims of gun violence in this city is a young black man on the verge of adulthood.

Because of his talent, Marche’s death got a lot of attention. And he definitely was special in that regard.

He was a Division 1 recruit in both football and track. As a sophomore, he anchored Imhotep’s state championship-winning 4×100 relay team. During his junior year he was a part of Imhotep’s 4×200 relay, which ranked No. 1 in the U.S. That same indoor season he was ranked ninth in the country for the 200m.

His head coach for his first three years at Imhotep, Jerome Lowery, described Marche as a selfless athlete and someone who always really cared about his teammates. Lowery never forgets what Marche did after suffering an injury during his junior year at the state meet.

“I said to him, ‘I don’t want you to run this relay,’ to keep him healthy so he could run at nationals,” Lowery recalled. “He said he would rather run the relays than run individually. That’s one of the memories I’ll always have of him.”

As outstanding as he was on the track, what I remember most about him was his personality. Marche always had fun — sometimes even while he was running.

I ran for Central in high school, and when I saw Kristian at track meets I remember he would always be dancing, rapping or doing something fun, either to get his team going or to throw his opponents off. Even before the Philadelphia Public League Championships, when everyone else was laser-focused and trying to fend of jittery nerves, you’d see him having a blast.

When my school won the championship my senior year, Marche came up to me talking trash — because that’s what we always did. At the state championships the year prior, we played basketball in our down time, not even thinking about the possibility of injury — and then we all play-fought afterwards, because that’s just what we did.

Now, instead of dancing, talking trash and running fast in Happy Valley, Kristian is lifeless, buried underground.

To see Marche lose his life to gun violence — someone who had worked hard, and earned his ticket out of the city — it makes me realize that these killers don’t care who you are.

For black kids in Philadelphia, turning 18 or 21 often comes with a sigh of relief, rather than celebration. On my 18th birthday, friends were telling me “I made it” — as if I had just been drafted by the Sixers — rather than just the normal “Happy birthday.”

We should be worrying about applying to college, applying for internships, keeping up our GPAs, but instead, we are worried about being shot — or burying our friends who have been.

When tragedy like this strikes, you always see people begging for a change or trying to do things to fix the problem, but it seems like nothing ever works. “Something needs to change,” “Put the guns down” — all the platitudes seem so worn out at this point. The people committing these crimes are not listening.

Statistics like the ones above make me think there will never be an end to this senseless killing.
I just hope I’m not next." [Source]

Writer Kris Rhim is a 19-year-old Philly native and Billy Penn summer intern who studies sports journalism and runs track at Springfield College.

That post was not about trump, or the government, or the powers that be who control our day to day lives. It was about yet another promising young man whose life was cut short because of violence in our streets, and a young man who made it out lamenting the fact that it could have been him.

The death of Kristian Marche, like so many others before him, was tragic and sudden. And his killer was a young man of a similar age whose "family" failed us as a society.

I don't care how poor you are, or how bad you think you have it. Raise your children to respect others and obey the rules set down by our community. And if you can't do that, then you shouldn't be having them in the first place. *Steps down off soapbox* 

*Pic from 6abc.com

Rats, dogs, and presidents.

Mr. trump is using words like "rat" and "dog" to refer to individuals in his tweet these days. Proof positive that the man is feeling cornered and is becoming even more insane with each passing day.

He reminds me of a previous president who had to leave the office in disgrace. You know the one: his quote "I am not a crook" will go down in history as one of the most memorable of all time when t comes to American presidents.

I can't blame trump for being scared and feeling trapped, though. The walls are closing in around him. Now, as it turns out, even the White House attorney is singing like Mariah Carey. And for the record Mr. trump, being a "rat" has nothing to do with it, you are supposed to be running a country not a mob organization.   

Now he is accusing Robert Mueller of "McCarthyism". That is a declaration so stunning that had any other president in modern America history said something like that about a sitting special prosecutor it would lead the news for weeks. But not with this clown. This is just another late night twitter meltdown which sadly has become the new normal.

"I have nothing to hide ... and have demanded transparency so that this Rigged and Disgusting Witch Hunt can come to a close," Trump tweeted.

"So many lives have been ruined over nothing - McCarthyism at its WORST!"
In another tweet, he declared: "Study the late Joseph McCarthy, because we are now in period with Mueller and his gang that make Joseph McCarthy look like a baby! Rigged Witch Hunt!"

- 'Desperate' - " 

If this is a "witch hunt" they should changed the name from of Washington D.C. to Salem. Because Mr. Mueller has sure caught a lot of witches. Unfortunately the head witch is still in charge and doing more to destroy the country as we know it every day. In fact, Mr. Mueller's track record of success in these investigations have been earth shattering. He has had at least 35 indictments and pleas so far, and we are hoping for more.

This week we will see if Mueller can add a conviction from a jury to  the list of his accomplishments. Paul Manafort is waiting to see what a jury of his peers decides in hi trial, and he could go away yo the big house for a long time.  (I wouldn't be surprised if this is a hung jury, but if I had to money on this trial I would say that Mueller will get a conviction on at least some of the counts.)

Mr. trump is already sending Manafort signals that he has his back. This too is wrong, but what else is new with this guy in the White House? While the jury is deliberating the president of the United Sates comments publicly on the case and praises the accused. 

Maybe this is why Mr. trump is feeling so trapped and cornered these days: He can't control what Mr Manafort and Mr. Cohen will say, or if Mr. Manafort is found guilty what he will give up in exchange for a lesser sentence. 

So expect more tweets and more signs of desperation from this president in the next few days. All we can hope for now is that  if he makes a seriously crazy move it won't have dire consequences for the rest of us.w

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: There is a black guy in the back of the room; go see what he wants.


*Pic from fortune.com

Open thread.

It's an open thread night people. Tell me what's on your mind.

I have a few thoughts:

Omarosa is still dropping tapes like a hip hop producer.

Is being a racist a requirement to run for office in the GOP?

Is being the immediate  family member of a white heterosexual male the most dangerous  place one can find themselves in these days?

Your president is planning a 100 million dollar parade and vets are still dying in the streets.

FOX showed a picture of Patti LaBelle  instead of Aretha Franklin  today when mentioning her death. Personally, I am not surprised, because we all look alike to the folks over at FOX. Their explanation for the snafu just made things worse.

Speaking of FOX, can someone tell me when Japan was a Communist country? Apparently over at FOX that's a part of history now.

Finally, the special forces commander who led the bin Laden raid blasted trump today and told him to revoke his security clearance as well. Is he a patriot or a traitor in your eyes?   

Bring back the tan suit.

Paul Ryan is the epitome of the P word.  A few weeks ago he said that trump was just "trolling" when he said that he would revoke the security clearance of some of his perceived enemies. Today, shockingly, the president did just that.   And all we have heard from Paul Ryan (and other elected republicans) so far is the sound of crickets.

Imagine, if you will, Barack Obama pulling some crap like this. We would have a constitutional crisis on our hands. Congress would order the military to remove the Negro from 1600 Pennsylvania, Avenue. Remember when he (Obama) wore that tan suit? FOX News was in meltdown mode for days. BREAKING NEWS! OBAMA wears a tan suit.

Of course, as we all know, trump and his minions did this now because they are trying to get the news of trump dropping the n word (and yes he said it) off the front page. Anything for a distraction at this point. 

"Manigault Newman on Tuesday released to CBS News a supposed recording of a conference call that purportedly features her, Eric Trump aide Lynne Patton, Pierson and campaign communications director Jason Miller.

"I am trying to find at least what context it was used in to help us maybe try to figure out a way to spin it," Pierson said on the tape. Patton is then heard describing a conversation she had with Trump about his alleged use of the slur.

"I said, 'Well, sir, can you think of any time where this happened?' And he said, 'no,'" Patton is heard saying.

Manigault Newman responds: "Well, that is not true."

Pierson later says: "No, he said it. He is embarrassed by it."

Pierson told CNN, “What you hear me doing, is interrupting, saying, ‘OK, OK, he said it, he said it, he’s embarrassed, let’s move on."'

It's scary that these Negroes chose to stay by trump's side knowing that he was a virulent racist. But this is how the modern house Negro rolls in America these days: it's all about getting for themselves even if it means sleeping (sometimes literally) with the enemy.

*Pic from pinterest.com

From Truman to trump.

President Harry Truman used the n word once.

 "I think one man is just as good as another so long as he's honest and decent and not a n****r or a Chinaman. Uncle Wills says that the Lord made a white man from dust, a n**** from mud, and then threw what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion that negroes ought to be in Arica, yellow men in Asia, and white men in Europe and America."

This letter was written in 1911, but other Americans presidents have freely used the n word since. (Including that liberal giant, LBJ) In fact, the most recent documented case of an American president using the n word was Richard Nixon. That was, of course, until Donald trump came along.

In a stunning news conference today, the press secretary said that she could not assure the American people that the president of the United States in 2018 did not recently use the n word. This ought to tell you something: the tape is out there, and it will be released soon. This press secretary lies about everything, but she refused to lie for the president this time. Why?

The president himself tweeted this morning (before calling Omarosa a dog) that he didn't use the n word because Mark Burnett says the tape does not exist. That's like me hitting my wife and when confronted about it, I ask you if you saw me hitting my wife. If you say you didn't see it, then I say I didn't hit her. Why does he need Mark Burnett to assure him that the tape doesn't exist? If he didn't say it he wouldn't even be worried about Mark Burnett and the tape. 

Anyway, Omarosa is proving to be a nightmare for team trump, and I suspect that she will not be going away anytime soon.

"President Trump added his former White House aide, Omarosa Manigault Newman, on Tuesday to the growing list of African-Americans he has publicly denigrated on Twitter, calling her “that dog” and a “crazed, crying lowlife” after her allegations against him of mental deterioration and racism.

Even for a president who consistently uses Twitter to assail his adversaries, the morning tweet about Ms. Manigault Newman was a remarkably crude use of the presidential bully pulpit to disparage a woman who once served at the highest levels in his White House.

In an interview on MSNBC, Ms. Manigault Newman responded that Mr. Trump treats women differently than he does men because he “believes they are beneath him” and that he talked in derogatory ways about minorities.

'He has absolutely no respect for women, for African-Americans,” she said.'"

And yet, Omarosa, you worked for him. Even after he peddled that racist lie about the former president for years. (Digression alert.) 

Anyway, now we will wait for Melania and Ivanka to put their two cents in and tell us all to "Be Best".  

  

The drama Queen strikes again.

  * I heard Omarosa's secretly recorded taping of her firing by John Kelly today on Meet The Press (MTP). And sadly, I couldn't help but think how vulnerable this White House is. These bumbling cast of characters have made a mess of how things are supposed to be done in the people's house.

The fact that Omarosa was able to secretly record her conversation in what is supposed to be one of the most secure places on earth is laughable----- Try recording what goes on in a courtroom and see how far you will get . I mean no one even bothered to check her cell phone? I gotta give her credit, Omarosa also has a lot of cohones, because she played the tape on MTP. I guess she has no more f***s to give about any type of legal repercussions from her actions, or of ever working in government again. 

During her appearance on MTP,  Omarosa also revealed a lot of things about trump that we already knew. Like, for instance, that he is a flat our racist. The problem with this particular messenger, though, is that she has zero credibility. She played along too long with trump and his antics and now she wants us all to act like this is something that we didn't now all along.

Omarosa also said that she heard the tape of trump dropping the n word, and that it will be used as some type of October Surprise by the dems. Sorry dems, it won't work. A tape of trump dropping the n word will only make him more popular among his pals in the GOP. They will act appalled, publicly. But they will still support him behind closed doors when the lights are off.

We know one person who is not pleased with Omarosa going public, and that's the orange one himself. While hanging with his biker buddies in Jersey, he called her a "low- life". (Not very presidential of you there big guy.) Can you imagine how many types of n*****s he is calling her, privately?

Omarosa also claims that trump wants to start a race war. Well, judging from the way things have been going in the country lately, he has already succeeded on that front.     

*Pic from theroot.com

Caption Saturday

I need a caption for this pic.

*Pic from rawstory.com

BlacKkKlanswoman

• 

In a way, the release of the movie BlacKkKansman is a perfect metaphor for something that is going on in the current news cycle. I am referring to the trials and travails in the life of former trump sycophant, Omarosa Manigault.

Omarosa was the black Klansman in the trump White House full of Klansmen and Klanswomen. Unlike the character in the movie, though, she was not trying to infiltrate and bring down this White House klan; she was a proud member of it. So much so that they had to throw her out kicking and screaming.  It is what led her to once declare that trump's critics will "bow down before him." (Wrong Omarosa, that was Stormy Daniels. And trust me, she wasn't doing it to honor him.)

But what a difference a few months makes. Now that she has been booted from the White House like  she is a character on the Apprentice, she is dishing on her former owner boss, Donald trump.

She has declared that she saw trump chewing paper, dropping the n word, and being promised a pay-off after leaving the White House  if she would keep her mouth shut. For the record, I believe that pretty much everything that she said about trump is true. But trump being a racist is not breaking news. That's like saying it's warmer in August on the East Coast than it is in December. We all know that trump is a racist, especially us black folks.

What we are not going to do is to act like this is some type of breaking news so that Omarosa can sell her books.

Omarosa was a house Negroes house Negro, and she decided long ago that she belonged in the house and not in the fields. She decided to become a field Negro when trump soured on her and she saw the writing on the wall. Besides, the time for her giving us all the dirt on you know is long past. She should have started reporting to the American people as soon as she started observing trump eating the morning newspaper for breakfast.

*Pic courtesy of  Wikipedia.