Orange You the Master Debater?

This week it was perceived by everybody in the press that there are going to be 2 maybe 3 debates. Let me tell you why they think that and then I’ll tell you why it probably won’t happen.

OK first of all the press loves elections because other than natural disasters, mass killings and kids stuck in a well, politics is the gift that keeps on giving like a prize heifer being milked several times a day. They love politics and more precisely elections. Elections are horse races that take forever; football games that are generational. The people have angrily and steadfastly taken sides and they want updates in win/loss terms around the clock and at their finger tips.

And there’s money in them thar politics. The only thing news based companies can make money on is the news… duh. But news is boring, right. Well, not when you stir up the ants. Not when you poke the bears. Not when you tell everybody every dang day that they are about to die. That’s not boring at all. It’s easy, do the news like that and make more money selling ads. And then you pay vaguely attractive half wits to read a teleprompter and smile and in some cases to repeat ad nauseum what everybody but the rubes know is just plain idiocy until enough of them believe it and now you’ve got a horse race.

but I digress.

The same press that loves the news and thus politics and further thus a reason to count balls and strikes on national TV and chew on it for days, would love to have a debate… more than one if possible and lets not forget the quadrennial snooze fest of the VP debates. They love it so much they try to egg on the candidates.

“Are you going to debate Biden?” they ask Trump.

“Do you think Trump will debate you, Mr. President?” they ask Biden.

They bring it up at every gathering once everybody knows who the final candidates are. It’s as common as “Good morning,” to a grumpy guy going into court or a happy guy stepping onto a helicopter to go meet world leaders, again.

So that’s one of the reasons for the season.

Here’s another one. For a long time now, Trump didn’t need to debate the other republicans and that let Trump control the narrative regarding debates. Even until just recently while he edged Biden in a few scattered polls in very selective demographics, Trump felt like he controlled the game because the winner doesn’t need to debate, they’re already winning and he thought he was the winner because people don’t tell him bad news. In fact, he pays a person $125,000 a year to search the internets to find good news of him for him and prints it out so he can manually edit out any possible negativity and then have the assistant post it that way on TRUTH Social.

So Trump thought he was ahead. We of course know now that Biden is ahead. The surest sign that Trump knows that he’s down A LOT is that he’s playing the debate card. Debates are stages and fans and cameras and lights and tv hosts that won’t cut off talkers. Why wouldn’t trump want that. He’ll make fun of and physically loom over Biden. Kinda like he did to Hillary. (Gawd, I wanted her to punch him in the throat.) If trump can control the narrative, he thinks “OK I’m Me, I’ve got this.”

So Trump starts spouting off. Biden has, up until now, avoided the question or said not yet or we’ll see, so Trump, an idiot, thinks Biden is afraid. When he spots what he thinks of as fear, Trump only has the one thing to do. Like a school yard bully in front of his gang, Trump taunts the smaller guy.

Trump’s post on Truth Social:
“It is important for the Good of our Country, that Joe Biden and I Debate issues that are so vital to American, and the American people, Therefore, I am calling for Debates, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE!”

NOTE: ANYWHERE and ANYPLACE are the same thing

His gang standing behind him were jeering and taunting, as you’d expect… like west side story… but no dancing… and mostly ugly old men. He repeated it at rallies because it got the MAGAts all het’up. If you haven’t seen it, Trump does do a rally speech per se. He does a stand up routine. A bad stand up routine. At the last one, about a third of the looky-loos left 20 minutes before he finished his set. The material is stale. His newest material is the debate stuff and he hammers on it because it gets a response.

That Troot (the closest I will ever come to calling what he writes a Truth): had been up for less than a week and then we got a video of Biden saying, “Come on Pal, let’s do this.” and not only is the guy not afraid, he knows something Trump and his acolytes have conveniently forgotten or never actually grokked, Biden already debated him twice and wiped to the floor with him. Biden wants to do this. Suddenly the gang behind Trump is worried. This is a trap. Sniff the cheese. I’m not sniffing the cheese, you sniff the cheese…. Hey Donny. He won’t sniff it, he’s afraid of everything. Mr. Rat brain needs a way out… he needs a safe exit.

Trump wrote this Troot

“Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that I hereby accept debating Crooked Joe Biden on Fox News. The date will be Wednesday, October 2nd. The Hosts will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Thank you, DJT!” he wrote.

This is his out. Manufactured by Trump for Trump. There is no debate on FOX. There have been no invitations to a debate on FOX. No Save the Date. Nothing… just Trump, a Truth typing assistant and a phone. Bret Bair, who seriously does not care for Trump won’t do it and Biden, paying heed to his chorus, probably would not either. I assume that’s Trump’s plan. Trump feels like Biden will poopoo the FOX debate that doesn’t exist, and that would be his chance to wiggle out of the other two… that do exist.

My feeling is that Biden won this one without risking an actual debate. He could walk away with that coup counted… plus he’s already winning the race and not going to jail and best of all, he made Trump look bad in front of his gang.

I could be wrong. Maybe Biden wants it. Maybe he wants to prove to people already voting for him that he’s still all there and capable of standing ground. Maybe he needs to prove it to himself. Its possible that maybe he does it anyway. My feeling is that his people will say a lot of what I’ve said and he will accept the victory.

Lastly, Trump is going to be a convicted criminal soon and that may drive his desperation to push the debate. Once Biden has pulled out after Trump has pulled out, Trump may feel like he controls the narrative again and they end up with a debate after all.. on a Wednesday, of course.

My money’s on, I don’t think so.

George Will Doesn’t Get a Pass

George Will , a writer with the Washington Post, stated in his usual too many words that the 112 House Republicans who voted against Ukraine aid this week and previous weeks “voted last Saturday to endanger civilization,” calling them “ignoble.”

Yes he’s right. However, just because he’s calling foul now doesn’t mean he didn’t play ball with and even give aid and comfort to that very same far right and center right of the GOP for the entire time Trump was destroying the office of president. Yes, he’s right that republicans that voted against Ukraine aid are a serious problem; a significant problem. But what he most obviously misses is that they are not the only problem. Republicans in general never seem to see that there is a party of selfish and there is a party of sharing. Remember that old commercial that used to run on Saturdays while we were all watching cartoons? Old guy (Louie Nye) asks a kid, “What did you learn in school today?” and the kid says “Sharing” but he drags the word out like a kid would, “Sharrrrrrring””

So anyway, the democratic party is the party that says we share the earth, let’s take care of it. We share the burden of aging and less capable persons because we realize that most assuredly we will, one day, be one of the aged and less capable. We share the cost of staying healthy not only because it’s the right thing to do but also because it is less expensive in the long run. (Which coincidentally is the exact reason the republican hate it… they make less money). We share a lot of the resources to help fix stuff we all use and all need while still maintaining our own stuff and our own choices and our own property. We share. We Share… WE… SHARE!

Republicans on the other hand are all about acquisition of wealth and hoarding resources and materials. Keep the stuff for us. Keep the stuff for me. Don’t let those other people have it and that lets us define “Other” people and other classes and other genders that we don’t want to have a piece of the pie even though there is so much pie nobody could ever eat it all. They have also recently become the party of pay back and rubbing it in and “Owning” the opposition. These are bad faith individuals. These are people that bullied in school. These are people that are bullies in business. Making it hurt is the point. Making sure you know you were beating matters to them. The republican party as it now exists is money grubbing, selfish, bullying, openly Nazilike and Christian nationalist. They’re entire purpose is to make sure poor people stay poor and any non whites will have to work extra hard just to be able to cast a vote, access education, healthcare and rights and protections within the law.

Here. I’ll make it simple.

Democrats are the good
Republicans are the bad

Prove me wrong.

Trump For Sale

Trump and his legal team filed papers today with Judge Engoron regarding the $454 Million judgement and his inability to post cash or a bond pending appeal. The bond or cash would have to be for the entire amount as well as the interest that is likely to be generated over the years long process of appealing said judgement. His team typed the words “practical impossibility” when describing their ability to find somebody (legal) that would take what is essentially and $650 Million bet that A) Trump could win on appeal and get it reduced enough to matter or that B) if he loses on appeal (again) that he will make good on the promise to pay the bonding company. Neither of those is a good bet and they all know it. Trump’s lawyer of the minute, Todd Blanche states that they have tried 30 bonding insurers through 4 separate brokers and all said no. Chubb, who holds the bond for the E Jean Carroll appeal ($91 million) has reported that they received so much negative press and pushback from the public that though they had initially considered the larger bond that they have now decided to pass.

So now, we have a guy that’s running for president that is about to lose his real estate empire. Apparently, none of the rest of his properties is unencumbered (money owed to other parties like banks and investors) or unburdened with deed restrictions that keeps them from being salable as potential developments. They’ve added up all that he legally owes and it is less that what he would owe if shit goes south (or more south as in Trump’s case).

So, who, legally speaking, has the kind of money that he needs and trusts him enough to put up the money?

The simple answer is nobody.

The better question is who has that kind of money, can afford to lose it or write it off and has a reason to give it to him? Well, who has thrown money at trump previously?

Saudi Arabia.
Remember the Jamal Khashoggi murder? An American citizen of Egyptian birth and a writer for the Washington Post went to the Saudi Embassy in Turkey by invitation for an interview wherein he was murdered and butchered and taken out to be disposed of in various locations. It was a huge deal and the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (acting on behalf of his father who is very old and infirm) was the direct causal link. He ordered it. Khashoggi had written often and negatively about the human rights violations in S.A. and MBS was tired of it and ordered him killed. And because Trump likes to make deals and would, if allowed to, murder journalists as well, he was inclined to work it out with Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS). The resulting deal had $2Billion dollars transferred to Son In Law Jared Kushner’s “Investment Fund” as well as money directly to Donnie himself that has been hard to quantify exactly but somewhere between 2 and 30 million dollars). They are good at the shell games regarding the movement of money and we will never be able to prosecute for this but just know, the price Trump got from MBS to turn off the heat over Khashoggi was in dollars, not policy. If he’d have made a policy deal, like “We’ll stop bitching about Khashoggi but you have to lower the cost of crude oil to $30 a barrel.” that would have been a thing he could tout as a win. A political win (which he was very short on) But no, he’s a greedy fuck and the only thing he cares about more than himself is actual physical money. So that was one.

China
Trump has waxed poetic about strong men leaders of totalitarian governments. He loves dictators. He puts the dick in taters. President Xi (Shee) has pretty much cornered all of the power handles in China now and got rid of the last guy standing in his way about 1 year ago. But he also needed some things from Trump. First he needed us to quit bitching about intellectual property theft for a while. Second, he needed us to stop blaming Covid 19 on China or at the very least put some doubt into the equation and maybe even to stop talking so much about the government funded lab in Wuhan doing the research on weaponizing virus. China is also increasing its hold on the South China Sea and the trade routes through there as well as the oil and gas beneath the ocean floor of that area by building man made islands and and putting military stations for the Chinese navy and air force on them. He, Xi (Shee), wanted to do what he wanted and he didn’t want any trouble from the US or our allies. Trump, the deal maker that doesn’t care about us or the world political situations and concerns himself with only himself and made a deal for Ivanka (one of his children and a direct extension of himself). She received a number of copy rights and patents on a clothing line that she didn’t design but sat somewhere close to while others were designing it. She also received several fully produced lines of clothing and accessories to be sold in a chain of stores across major Chinese cities. Not much of it ever sold, but when the entire kit and caboodle was sold (Stores, equipment, company, products and warehouses full of stuff, she was given a one time payment or $650 million dollars and residual payments as though the stores were still open and the products were actually selling. Sweet deal for Ivanka.

Putin
I suppose I could say Russia but really everybody knows there isn’t really a Russia, there’s Putin’s stuff, Putin’s places and Putin’s people and Putin’s army and Putin’s money. So, Putin has had his fingers in this pie forever. As a KGB guy he was trained to destabilize governments and he’s been doing that to us and other wester companies since he got the job. It accelerated quite a bit with social media like Facebook and twitter helping out. Putin and his oligarchs have laundered money through lots of real estate networks in this country and others but none so thoroughly as Trump’s. Trump loves Putin. Trump loves thinking of himself as a gangster and the Russians as the best gangsters and Putin as the leader of the best gangsters ever ever ever. Trump wants to have Putin’s babies he loves Putin so much. Putin may have kompromat against Trump… everybody assumes at this point that he does. That might be a reason that Trump does whatever Putin says but really it’s more likely to be the fan boy worship. Regardless of why, Trump’s Russian daddy is Putin and who do you go to when you need money…. well, Daddy, of course.

The problem isn’t that Trump owes the money. The problem isn’t that maybe he could find the money, even in nefarious places. Not, that is, if he wasn’t trying to become the president again. The super obvious trouble is that if you are trying to become the leader of a country and you get your ass jammed up and the only way out is money from a country that is in opposition to the country you’re trying to be the leader of, you are going to run into a lot of conflicts of interest. Trump would be serving more than one master. Technically, he’s supposed to serve the US if he’s the president. (He never did and he never will but that’s what he’s supposed to do). Then somebody with a ton of money gives him some and says, don’t worry about paying it back (and I promise you, Trump will never worry about paying it back) and at that point you now have a fully owned and operated President of the United States (if he wins). And none of these players cares even a little bit about how that looks. The general public already regards MBS, Xi and Putin to be enemies of this state. Only the MAGAts regard Putin well and that will die with Trump.

As it currently looks, Trump showed up Monday morning, hat in hand, after boasting for weeks through his own mouth and the mouth of Alaina Habba that he had the money… lots of money.. no worries. Of course his other lawyers were also arguing that nobody would make a bond for him and he doesn’t have that kind of cash available. The appeals judge in a move I would never have made, lowered the bond to $165 million to stay the execution of the order until the appeal of completed and gave him 10 days to get it (ten business days). That doesn’t mean he has it or can get it, but as we’ve discussed, there are motivated buyers browsing for a president to own. They haven’t publicly helped him as fat as we know and the business monitor and her team and been upgraded in powers so that they can report on where and from whom Trump gets any money from any body, especially if that anybody is Russian, Chinese or Saudi.

A Lotta Cash He Ain’t Got

Recently (Feb of 2024) Donald Trump was hit with a significant disgorgement judgement ($355 Million) in the New York Business Fraud Trial. That comes on the tail of a judgement in the second E Jean Carroll trial ($83.3 Million). That followed the first E Jean Carroll judgement of $5 Million (modest in comparison).

Let’s not forget the interest. At the end of February, the $355M will start compounding at 9%. Yeah, that’s right, the entire time an appeal trial is ongoing, the interest is ka-chinging. So Trump will owe a further $31.9 million per year, or $2.7 million per month, $614,196 per week, $87,742 every single day if he choses to appeal and loses.

Here’s another interesting tidbit. If Trump wants to appeal any of these judgements, he has to post a bond equal to the amount of the judgement plus anticipated interest. So to appeal the latest E Jean Carroll judgement of $83.3 million, he would have to post a bond for $83.3 million plus the interest that would accrue given an estimate of the time it would take to come to trial. Appeals in the US Federal level take years. At $87 grand every dang day, one cannot pay it off too soon.

Trump doesn’t just lose here in the states. Just this week he was smacked by the courts in England for bringing a frivolous suit against Orbis, the corporation that was hired by the GOP (originally) to find dirt on Trump during the primaries leading up to the 2016 elections. You will remember it as the Steele Dossier. The judge in that case threw it out saying it had no chance of winning. The Judge then asked Orbis how much they’ve had to pay to defend themselves and what they might have lost in business income based upon Trump’s baseless suit. Orbis said that it had cost them about £600,000 which is $771,300… with interest it will run past a million in no time.

That’s the civil part of his problems. He also has the criminal problems and… Taxes.

Trump has had a tax audit ongoing for 7 or 8 years and, according to reports, represents an additional $100 million in unpaid taxes PLUS THE PENALTIES AND INTEREST. We don’t know what his penalties will be but the standard model can be as high as 100%. So he’s absolutely on the hook for the owed $100 million but also potentially for an additional $100 million as a penalty. The IRS charges 3% on unpaid amounts and 5% on Penalties… MONTHLY. That audit is 7 or 8 years old. Monthly interest on that bundle is minimally $9 million dollars… per month.

Just thought of this part,… he’s going to have tax investigators up his ass for the foreseeable future now because he’s essentially a convicted fraudsters and tax cheat. Everything he’s ever done financially will be looked over. Another interesting tidbit… there is no statute of limitations on unpaid taxes. They can go back to the womb if they want to.

Jeezus, he’s fucked.

All told, Trump is edging closer and closer to a billion bucks in judgements, fines, penalties and interest. Guess what he ain’t got? He ain’t got that. Trump claimed in a recent deposition that he had well in excess of $400 million in available cash. Of course, he inflates everything so there’s no real telling what he has or doesn’t have. I’d be willing to bet that he doesn’t have enough to cover the judgements he has to pay at the end of this month.

In his defense, most rich people don’t have piles of cash. They have investments and property and seats on boards, but their value is all tied up, not liquid, not available. When they need cash they can borrow from any number of banks because they actually have the means to pay it off and have a history of paying their debts. Whether or not Trump intends to pay or appeal, he still has to come up with a way of parking $355 million dollars in cash or bond with the New York State courts or risk being found in contempt and having the state take over the process of finding the money. He can’t fudge it or lie about it or make up some funny and insulting thing about it or the judge to get it done. It has to be real and it has to be money. Normally, instead of putting up cash for something like this, a person would put up a bond. That would mean paying a bonding service to guarantee the payment. But who would ever do that for ol’Donnie who has stiffed EVERYBODY that he’s ever done business with. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY has any faith that he’ll pay. His credit is zero.

Ok, so sell off some properties, right? Not so fast. Given his standard model of leveraging any asset well past it’s legal limit it is unlikely that Trump has any unencumbered properties to sell and if he does sell he would first have to satisfy any pending loans, then pay off any partners in the project and then set in escrow an amount equal to the taxes on that sale. He might, depending upon the property, actually take a loss in selling anything. There might not be enough actual money left to pay off nearly a billion in fees, fines, penalties and just plain debt. Plus, he can’t do business in New York (The financial capitol of the world) for several years and neither can his kids or the other officers in the company. And, he can’t borrow from any bank that is chartered or registered in New York. And because every important and legitimate bank in the financial world is chartered and or registered to do business in New York… he can’t borrow from any legitimate bank anywhere even if they hadn’t all collectively told him to eat a bag of dicks a long time ago (except Deutche Bank who told him this year to eat that bag of dicks). Deutche bank, for those that don’t know, is the bank that cleans oligarchs and dictators money for them. So if these guys tell you to eat a bag of dicks, they mean it.

He Doesn’t have it, Can’t Get it and will never find it.

Where does that leave us in our tale of Trumpian woe? If he doesn’t have the cash, which we are all pretty sure he doesn’t (regardless of what Alina Habba says with a balled up fisty anger and indignation on the courthouse steps) who would put up a bond for Trump? Who has that kind of money and likes Trump or Trusts Trump enough to go on the hook for $355 million, $83.3 Million and $5 million for him? Nobody, that’s who. I wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire but that’s me. There are some nation states and dictators that could easily come up with the money and with whom Trump has done tons of shifty business but Trump is no longer useful to them because he is no longer the president and he cannot win it back (see some of my other posts on that note). Plus, they would never be so public and open about it anyway. He’s not going to get Saudi Arabia or China or Putin or one of Putin’s oligarchs to put up the money. And there just aren’t enough MAGA idiots in the country with enough cash laying around to help him out.

Oh, I almost forgot, he’s also burning about $1 million a month in up front legal fees and he’s getting the shittiest lawyers on the planet because all of the good ones have refused to work for him anymore because he won’t pay, won’t take advise and won’t follow orders. So he ends up with Chris Kise and Alaina Habba, neither of whom will find themselves on the cover of Legal PEOPLE Magazine as Lawyer of the Year.

And now, he begins the final slow and inexorable march towards the abyss. The criminal stuff.
91 charges in 4 indictments in 4 jurisdictions.

He’s going to be broke. He’s going to be broken. And he’s going to be in jail.

In the very old days somebody might have suggested that he be drawn and quartered as well and had his various parts ridden to the far reaches of the realm and posted on pikes as a warning to those who would follow his lead. We may, in these modern times, have to be satisfied with his face on every news story, magazine, poster and billboard with the words, CRIMINAL, LOSER and TRAITOR painted bright and bold for all to see.

I suppose it will have to be enough.

How a Win Can Be a Loss

Lets talk about the Iowa caucus for a moment. The tv is saying Trump thrashed the other candidates, but, really, did he? Let’s examine it.

8% of registered Republicans in Iowa caucused (voted). That’s down 56% from the previous caucus (over half of those that voted last time decided not to this time.). The weather played a part in that, I’m sure. How much, who can say, but it played some part. It was 7 degrees in Iowa on caucus night. Snow was piled up and roads were iced over in many places and the wind was howling. Just going out in that could be a risk to life. If the primary seemed pointless and mostly a forgone conclusion… why drive to town and caucus and take the risks. To overcome the idea of that risk or of the idea that the whole thing was a forgone conclusion, one would necessarily be considered “motivated”… a motivated voter. Motivated voters tend to be hard core for their thing whatever it is; in this case, republican politics. So, these 8% who showed up… we could count them as “motivated” republican voters. Considering the cold and the wind and the trouble, etc. they might even be considered the cream on top of the motivated voters… the most motivated; willing to risk death, even.

OK, so we’ve established that they are republican and they were motivated to brave the weather and whatever else. Moving on.

So, if only the most motivated republicans showed up to caucus and of that group, only half voted for Trump, that would also mean that half of them DID NOT. Just short of 50% of the motivated Iowa republicans that showed up voted for somebody other than Donald Trump. That means they were looking for somebody else. Hoping for somebody else. Hard core republicans casting their lot with a “non trump” person.

I know that’s a small cross section and we should not draw too much from a single, poorly attended event, but Trump’s victory over all of the other candidates combined was by the tiny margin of 2,222 votes.

What does it mean?

It means he’s weak. He’s weaker now that he was when he lost the first (popular) vote and he has continued to bleed off support in each successive election cycle (mid terms and presidential). He has never actually won an election by popular votes. In fact, even in the the electoral victory he lost by three and a half million votes.

Another important point: He’s not gaining voters. He’s losing voters fast and it’s getting faster. On top of that, his main demographic skews old and older and they are dying at a rate of several thousand per day nationally. No young people are suddenly deciding to go Trumpy… or at least not enough to count and certainly not enough to offset the losses.

All we have to do is make sure we all show up and vote and this guy loses. He has only ever lost by popular vote before and this last one will be his LAST one. Well, if he even makes it to the election. For that he has to win the primaries (iffy). And even if he does win the primaries, they could say no to him at the convention (that doesn’t seem likely) He’s not guaranteed the republican nomination. And then of course, there are all of the court cases, starting with whether or not it’s even legal for him to be on the ballot, the crimes against the nation and the constitution and immunity (which does not exist). He could end up being convicted of some pretty serious felonies by the time people are actually voting and though there are no specific laws that would keep a convicted felon from serving as president, he would never again be allowed to have a security clearance based upon some of the crimes he stands to be convicted of. I have no doubt that he will be convicted of those crimes (all 91 of the alleged crimes plus a few they will likely throw in along the way).

The bottom line is that he’s weak. No matter what the right is saying because that’s who they are and that’s the stuff they do best…. yammer incessantly. Noise all the time. Truth and facts tend to be a little quieter. You have to listen for them but they ARE there.