Something Inauthentic Here

 

This is wild. Particularly the part where he says "my friends and I coordinated a bank run" followed by "so then I bought shares of the bank thinking I could profit off the run". pic.twitter.com/67iwCrE6yj

— @chimeracoder@mastodon.social🦦 🏳️‍🌈 (@chimeracoder) March 12, 2023

While I appreciate the idea that people with money in SVB aren't necessarily bad actors who deserve to lose their savings (above the insured amount) and that the majority should be "made whole", there is something that feels inauthentic about the collapse of this bank and Signature Bank (which has a lot of crypto money in it).  I don't trust what I'm looking at because of the people I'm looking at. There are people wealthy enough to lose some portion of their vast fortune and still be fine--a bank run is just an investment in fuckery.

I remember back in December I was snarky about a Russian bank run. These things can be precipitated by rumors. I feel like the bank management and certain investors need to be looked at. This bank run has nothing to do with "wokeness" specifically (how do you even connect the dots on that one? A bank certainly could do woke shit and be responsible enough to have a risk assessment officer--these guys didn't) so much as deregulation and gambling in the old savings establishment again. In the meanwhile, the people who served us junk bonds and the dot com and housing bubbles really don't have anything they need to be telling us about moral hazard right now. 

There is no good reason there should be any "contagion" from this thing. Doom-saying about it...feels inauthentic. 

More Than Satisfied

Biden/Harris clicks for me in a satisfying way as a balanced ticket, and all too many think pieces are going to run down the list of identities that show the contrast between these candidates. You know, he's the white male party elder and she's the younger woman of color, etc. But I want to talk about the energy, the synergy, the chemistry--these are two people who care about good government and show great empathy for others. 

I was pissed off in December 2019 when Kamala Harris dropped out of the Democratic 2020 primary. To me, she represented the energy we needed, but I never did gather my thoughts about my disappointment as they probably constituted not a blogpost, but a twenty-volume leather bound special print edition that goes on at length about matters such as "Yeah but the 1990s", "Why the hell Iowa, though?",  "Did the lady smile enough for you?" and "Do racists actually care where brown people are from before they do a racism?" I refrained because I do not have twenty-volume leather bound time and space. 

But damn I thought about all of it. I feel ready to have her back in a journey where she's going to get the kind of press Hillary Clinton got, because that machine never stops. And I know even the plusses of her record are going to be treated as possible strikes against her.

She has taken on the banks and worked for the environment. She has walked a line where she has tried to do justice to the victims of crimes and the accused. She has been a supporter of civil rights and LGBTQ rights. She is not perfect, and no one is. She walked with BLM and marched in Pride. She made Bill Barr uncomfortable during his confirmation hearing and she made Brett Kavanaugh uncomfortable during his. I welcome people who want to say anything about that being wrong--don't make me love her more, you bastards!

I am more than satisfied. I am energized. I see the mutual respect and admiration between Biden and Harris, that one moment aside. (Or maybe magnified, in how they mutually understood it for what it was.) I think they on the whole are complementary and can accomplish big things--like cleaning out the Augean Stables of the Trump government.  

And for what it's worth, Trump's talk about "nastiness" and the GOP talking points about being "fake" are weak. She's both considered one of the most progressive candidates, but is also a "cop"? She dares to be more complex than any talking points? Maybe the problem is they really don't know how to do talking points about her that don't address the bad things Trump isn't supposed to say, but says anyway.  Because that will obviously be a great look (/sarcasm). And maybe that's why he seems shook. Or sedated. But I guess mostly shook. 

TWGB: Ultima Trump

Before I get into the week that was, I want to take a little note of this particular scene from Trump's Bedminster property where some folks spend a fuckton to be a member of. I've seen better carpets in bowling alleys. I know, my grand-dad made carpet for bowling alleys. And that tacky gold and black makes me cringe. I don't know exactly what the cachet of Trump country club life is worth, but then again, I have what Fuzzy Zoeller once pointed out were two real handicaps to a great swing and I prefer unmanicured nature to a giant lawn interrupted by bros trying to put something small into devious holes from a distance. I am not put off exactly by the scenario of hostile, shorted males and small, long-skirted females and the overall aura of "fuck you" radiating from the assembled Bedminsterites, for this is New Jersey. But yes, I am a little bit judging. And their posture knows folks like me exactly would.

TWGB: Something's Gotta Give

President's lawyers think it was unfair for Mueller to ask questions of the President without first informing the President that he should tell the truth because Mueller might have evidence to show false answers were false. https://t.co/stFyKZjQNB pic.twitter.com/VycHZy6au6

— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) November 29, 2018

Looking over the news contents of a super-busy day in TrumpWorld, this Tweet encapsulates something really "off" about the mindset of Trump and the folks surrounding him: Why would it be "unfair" for Mueller to ask President Trump questions without warning him of the penalties for lying, if not lying was something he should the hell have known not to do anyway? Was telling the truth such an unreasonable expectation?

Apparently! It seems to be taken for granted that Trump does not tell the truth and that people around Trump have reasons not to tell the truth, and frankly, that points to the likelihood that the truth is actually...not good. And it seems like his attorneys (of which he has had several) have never been able to entirely persuade him that the truth isn't bent into some origami abstract subjective performance art by either the frequency of one's lies or the Rashomon-like posting of several versions of the purported event because of an odd set of circumstances called "facts".

This brings us to the plea deal by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, for the charge of making false statements to Congress. In other words, he admits to lying, just as Jerome Corsi, who rejected a plea deal about the lying thing, admits rather publicly on tv to have actually been lying. (which makes it altogether seem to me that Corsi isn't really objecting to the perjury charge, but the cooperation agreement, because he'd like to still have some lies, thanks.) Cohen, on the other hand, wants to get washed, and has banked 70 hours of grilling with Mueller and company. Unlike Paul Manafort, he (like Rick Gates) might have come to the conclusion that he still has enough to live for to recognize the bind that he's in, and just be forthcoming. Because facts are facts, and you can get tripped up by them.

The material issue that was lied about in this instance was the development of a Moscow Trump Towers deal. This is a thing that had been a dream of Donald Trump for some time, and which other members of his family had worked on (with some interesting connections). This could be scoffed at as being a real estate matter only, except that it explicitly does tie into the presidency run, in the words of Felix Sater: "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it." (I do not know if something like Trump Tower Moscow is what is meant in the cryptic "business deal" with Russia referred to in a recent George Papadopoulos story). 

This is liable to have some real fall-out for Trump. We already have reason to believe that Michael Cohen can point us in the direction of one or more campaign finance violations in the form of hush money to Stormy Daniels (and likely others--wanna bet?). The ongoing story about Trump financial dealing with Russians, which he once heartily disavowed ever having, could have been used by the Putin regime as leverage, even if there had not been any kompromat of the sort alleged by the Steele Dossier. (Buzzfeed, who initially published the dossier, has had some great reporting since that is corroborated by this plea deal, and suggests new questions raised.) But Cohen worked for Trump for a dozen years or so--and in that time, might have known who knows what about other instances of bribery or graft. 

Our estimation of Trump's generally sleaziness is such that when Deutsche Bank was raided just now, folks immediately thought of Trump, because Deutsche Bank was still loaning money to him after other banks weren't interested in the risk. (And even after he defaulted on a loan in 2008.) With Deutsche Bank's history of money laundering, and for that matter, history of money laundering in Trump's immediate vicinity, one could wonder whether he stayed a customer because he was "otherwise profitable". (So was Jared Kushner. Maybe.) Also, oddly, on the same day, Chicago alderman and former Trump Tax attorney Ed Burke got raided. Weird--but Trump got good tax deals, and, uh, so did Jared Kushner. I'm not saying these things are connected, only that Trump's former bagman might have knowledge pertaining to these things. And knowing nothing more about his potential liability (if reporting is correct that Rosenstein is still the man over this investigation, and Whitaker has not yet sought control, I guess nothing is funneling up to Trump,) somebody is sweating Man-Tan into his collar by now. 

And by now, what we know is, Trump doesn't react well to reversals of fortune, surprises, slights real or imagined, rain, random stuff said by celebrities, stairs, bad press, or reminders that he can't control everything and that things like facts and laws exist. So he is going to be a reclusive, surly, and probably fast-exiting omnishambles at G20. 

Which is a damn shame in the midst of a trade war he started, and seems to not understand the fundamentals of. 

Coming up--Manafort sentencing date will be decided. I am glad to be getting my blogging chops back, but I wish these folks would stop aggressively "newsing" at me. How can I follow so many stories? Also, I might think more indictments are forthcoming, and I am not even mad. 

(TWGB is my edgy new way of working "TrumpWorld Grab-Bag" into the title of my blog posts, because I'm easily seeing doing a couple of these a week for the forseeable future and am not going to work that mouthful into the titles all the damn time.)

Even TrumpWorld Grab-Bags Get the Blues

There is a limit to how much good faith one can presume of other people. When it comes to Senate Republicans, Senators Grassley and Graham pretty much exhausted whatever confidence I had in them with the "stunt" recommendation to the FBI to investigate Christopher Steele for possible criminal charges of lying to them. In the midst of an investigation into whether Trump campaign officials conspired with Russia to use stolen information to win an election, the person these partisan hacks decide to finger as a problem is the whistleblower?

Add to that the news that the DOJ is opening a new probe into the Clinton email server and that the Clinton Foundation is currently being investigated by the FBI, and it's hard for me not to see a pattern that looks like Republicans using the Justice Department for partisan ends. It doesn't even seem all that low-key. And while they are at it, pretending that the FBI was actually Hillary Clinton's fan club. 

This is the kind of thing that makes me dread blogging. It isn't healthy to look around and just see examples of shameful dealing everywhere.

But then, someone does something that really picks me up--Senator Dianne Feinstein decided to release a transcript of a congressional interview with Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS, which was the research company that produced the dossier. And it appears to confirm what by now we should already know--the dossier was not the reason for the FBI investigation into Trump/Russia connections, because they already received information from someone inside the Trump orbit. Simpson also related the Steele broke off contact with the FBI in October 2016 when he became concerned that there might have been a pro-Trump faction within the FBI (which wasn't such a stretch--anti-Clinton is probably more like it) when a narrative was fed to The New York Times that no links were found between Trump and Russia. 

Now, I know this new information probably isn't going to change the whole conversation (I don't know--Trump hasn't mean-Tweeted about FBI DD McCabe since it was reported that his speculation about McCabe having anything to do with the Clinton investigation was rubbish) but it sheds some light where there was obfuscation. 

In other Steele Dossier news (how is there more Steele Dossier news?), Trump attorney Michael Cohen is filing a defamation suit against Buzzfeed for publishing the not-actually-discredited document. This strikes me as amazing for much the same reason as Trump's threatening to file a defamation suit against anyone over Michael Wolffe's Fire and Fury--it certainly looks like an effort to silence people to prevent true information coming out, and the discovery process would probably be brutal and unfavorable to President Trump because, and stick with me on this, Trump has a four decade long, well-documented history in multiple books and publications as being really shady. Why, before he was a fan of Trump, Steve Bannon shopped oppo connecting Trump to organized crime.  The connections aren't hard to make. 

It also isn't hard to see what Russia might have gotten in return for their "investment". This story from Spencer Ackerman that a White House official floated the idea of the US withdrawing from Eastern Europe reminds me a bit of the search for "deliverables" Trump wanted to offer Putin last year. And if one wanted an example of what a financially-leveraged President might be able to do, say, for his creditors, there is a nice example of a favor with respects to waiving penalties for interest manipulation that he is doing for a few banks, including Deutsche Bank. (The very one Steve Bannon noted might be of particular interest to Mueller's investigation.)

There's Money in These TrumpWorld Grab-Bags

"Follow the money" is basically right up there with "Cherchez la femme" for getting to the heart of the plot of most weird capers--the apparent weirdness in the Trump/Russia orbit definitely seems to be a "follow the money" story. Take "Most Likely to Be indicted Soon if He isn't Already Singing Like a Nightingale", former general Mike Flynn. He seems to have at one point been working out a caper in which a green card- holding Turkish expatriate would be forcibly extradited to Turkey, for which Flynn and his son, Mike Flynn, Jr., would get a pay out of $15 million. 

Okay, if you're a TrumpWorld Grab-Bag aficionado, that knowledge doesn't seem all that brand-new to you. And if you're paying attention, that does mean that both Mike Flynn and son were on the Trump transition team contemporaneously with this stupid and not terribly-American thing being cooked-up, and yes, you probably have heard before that Congresscritter Devin Nunes was at a breakfast where...

Well, yeah. That was rumored about before. But now it looks like an actual investigation into all that has fallen into Robert Mueller's purview. So. This would be an investigation Nunes can't interfere with or try to squirt squid-ink on. 

But, of course, the same thing can be said about recently indicted Paul Manafort (whose former son-in-law also appears to be in some kind of legal jeopardy regarding financial shenanigans) who seems to have been doing some money laundering, possibly in connection with his work for the Putin-friendly Ukrainian regime of Viktor Yanukovych. In pursuit of this investigation, Mueller recently received relevant bank records having to do with the Bank of Cyprus. Which is so weird, because, coincidentally, Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whom Trump has known for 20+ years, also is connected with Bank of Cyprus and Russia. He's also not a real billionaire, apparently. 

It's a small freakish world, that's all I have to say. 

But anyhow, some of that financial jiggery-pokery and off-shore investment stuff that Manafort is suspected of playing with, seems to be what was funding Steve Bannon's early anti-Hillary Clinton smears, some of which, though oft-debunked, stay wingnut currency to this very day. This is because the money was coming from the Mercers (the recently-retired Robert and the recently upgraded Bekah) and they (rather like the Koch brothers, come to think of it) hate paying taxes. 

Which might explain why Cambridge Analytica made moves to coordinate with Julian Assange.  Especially since, if they talked to any of the folks in the Trump Campaign who were in contact with Russia and knew that the DNC hack was Russian and had reason to believe that WikiLeaks was the front for the eventual "leaks", they knew this could be paid back with a successful Trump win, since he would try tax reform. You know, the thing McConnell and Ryan seem to be willing to accept any amount of bullshit to pull off. 

I don't know if any recent interview with Stephen Miller might illuminate the Carter Page/George Papadopoulos all that much. That doesn't look to be about money, so much as love of the game. But what a dumb, sordid, not especially American, grifting game it seems to be!

In a sidenote that has nothing to do with money at all, former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller recently explained that, while he doesn't know of any activity between Trump and prostitutes, prostitutes were definitely on offer in his 2013 trip. He doesn't think anything happened, but hey! Man's gotta sleep sometime!

There certainly seems to be all kinds of leverage in this world. Money is one. Pride is another. But we're closing in to the real "money" question: What did Trump know about all this, if he ever did, and when?  

Why Can't Obama Get Paid?

I know there are people* who are champing at the bit to call my best president (sorry Bill!) a neo-liberal sell-out, but I have a tiny bit of news for you--highly-qualified intelligent capable performers net a ginormous amount to get them to roll out of bed and do trifles for you, because honestly, they have done better work and expect to get paid for trifling.

This goes for paid speakers in much the same way it does for the cliché of pop stars doing private concerts for an Arabian prince's birthday or a Swiss banker's kid's. Sometimes this happens on the weirdly down-low, or right out in public.  If you have a name to conjure with, you can conjure up some bank with it. I'm still trying to work out why it is a bad thing that Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton, for that matter) gets paid big bucks for talking to rich people who can afford to pay, when they have listened to poor people in their lives for what we honestly know for free--and even tried to do stuff for them.

This conversation kind of makes me sick, because this is one of those "why we can't have nice things" conversations. If someone is a "sell-out" we have to start questioning whether they ever did any good. If Hillary Clinton took money from the big banks for speeches, how did that take away from trying to get women's rights recognized? If Barack Obama takes money from big banks for speeches, how does that take away from his accomplishments?

The thing is, it doesn't. Love of money might be the root of all evil, but getting paid isn't. Money is a tool. It can pay for nuclear warheads, or it can pay for hospital beds. It can pay for chemical warfare, or it can buy AIDS medication for children to live their lives. It can build bridges to a better tomorrow, or it can build walls to keep the concerns of the hungry, harried, and hurting away from the folks who have the means to help those people. Or it can even buy a moment of time from people who understand how to communicate the needs of a world to those who have a world to offer, and maybe even unleash a movement in the best of directions...

But no really. I understand why some people might get concerned with how some people get paid to speak. Sometimes I don't like how I do my piece for free, either. But I know what my little voice is worth. And I don't hate, I just keep on singing.

*Not to hate on Bernie Sanders, or Van Jones, or Elizabeth Warren. Much love--but wrong is wrong. And if Barack Obama has a thing to say, as the first black president, he gets his asking fee to say it. That is how it is, and for that, I have no concerns. Until he endorses some entirely dumb shit that isn't commensurate with the values we all came to admire him for. Then, I will have a problem.

Schroedinger's Swamp

So, it sort of looks like Newt Gingrich made the terrible mistake of alleging that Trump wasn't really out to "drain the swamp" even though that was the oft-stated reasoning for the Trump campaign. Even though it seems like Trump is just this minute importing alligators. But it doesn't do to contradict the Great Leader. If Trump wants to still claim to be draining the swamp, well, this will still be the story.   Nevermind the lobbyists or the Wall Streeters. Because the swamp certainly might be being drained if one doesn't happen to be observing. And observing is not anyone's actual business, as yet.