Daily Check-In 01/31/2019

Thursday, January 31, 2019

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

The Blocked Calls

From the ABC Story:

Investigators on the Senate Intelligence Committee have learned the identities of three blocked phone calls with Donald Trump Jr. just before and after the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, three sources familiar with the calls told ABC News.

The calls to blocked numbers, which came on June 6, and after the meeting on June 9, were between Trump Jr.’s cell phone and two family friends — NASCAR CEO Brian France and real estate developer Howard Lorber, according to the sources.

Both men have close ties to President Donald Trump and actively supported his campaign during the 2016 election.

Trump gloated about the news in a late-night tweet on Thursday, saying the call were “conclusively found NOT to be made to me.”

Interesting.  According to this, the two people who Donnie Jr. talked to from blocked numbers were the man who is single handedly destroying NASCAR and Howard Lorber. Who is Howard Lorber?  This is from the Washington Post:

Businessman and investor Howard Lorber already donated $100,000 to the Trump Victory fund, has been named as one of Trump’s “best friends” and even appeared once on “The Apprentice.” He is also president and chief executive of the Vector Group, a holding company that has various business interests in Russia. In 1996, Lorber brought Trump to Moscow to look for opportunities for Trump to lend his famous name to development projects there.

“Howard has major investments in Russia,” Trump toldRussian politician Alexander Ivanovich Lebed after his trip to Moscow with Lorber, according to a 1997 profile of Trump in the New Yorker. “See, they don’t know you,” Trump told Lorber. “With all that investment, they don’t know you. Trump they know.”

At that time, Trump and Lorber were discussing Trump building a huge luxury residential tower in Moscow as part of a project owned by a subsidiary of Lorber’s firm. The project never took off, but it was only one in a long line of projects Trump tried to start in Russia during his string of visits there dating back to the time of the Soviet Union.

Interesting.  According to this report (which I’m taking with a grain of salt) the calls were made to a real estate developer and investor who played a major role in at least two previous attempts to build Trump Tower Moscow.  Remember, Trump tried at least 4 times to build a tower in Moscow.

  1. Following his trip to Moscow in 1987.
  2. In the late 90’s.
  3. In the late 2000’s through to 2013.
  4. From 2013 until 2016.

Lorber was attached to at least the second and third attempts, and if he’s calling up Jr. right before and after the June 9th meeting.  What’s more interesting, and will need to be sussed out, is where was Lorber during this call.  We know that he was in Trump Tower the day before along with other rich guys doing some fundraising stuff.  It wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to think that Trump asked Lorber to do him a favor and call Jr. right before the meeting took place.  Hell, it was 2016.  There’s this thing called call forwarding.  Lorber could have forwarded Trump on directly, given a play by play, or relayed some messages.

Besides, as Steve Bannon said in ‘Fire & Fury’, “The chance that Don. Jr did not walk these Jumos up to his father’s office on the 26th floor is zero”.

Roger Stone

 

NRA

 

Clearances

 

 

Incoming!!!

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

 

SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A INDIVIDUAL-1

New York Times Interview

 

A Lack of Intelligence

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

CONGRESS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

SCOTUS & COURTS

 

#METOO & WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, & ECONOMY

 

STUDENT ISSUES

This hurts.  I don’t like to talk about myself that much here, but I went to AIP for my undergrad back in the 2000’s.  It’s where I met my wife, and where I made a lot of lifelong friends.  It was also a glorified diploma mill and for-profit school that didn’t give a flying rat’s ass about how much a student learned or how well they performed or what their career prospects actually were, as long as the school made money.  Back during my time the school was owned by EDMC, one of the poster children for the abuses performed by for-profit schools.  I could probably write a book about the shady tactics they used to get students to join, but one trick in particular was lying about prospective incomes for the graduates.

During my sales pitch, I was shown a series of salaries that while not earth shattering, were at least respectable, especially given the price tag of the school.  That helped sway me to enroll there instead of trying to apply at another university.  Fast forward three years to my last quarter, and a different “career adviser” came into a class and showed new salary numbers that were 20-30% lower across the board, and capped this off with a speech along the lines of “you’re screwed if you don’t have at least two internships under your belt.”  This bitch was saying this to a room full of students about to graduate in two weeks.  There was almost a riot.  I’ve been mad before, but this was one of those rare times in my life where I was “Choke a bitch in front of 30 witnesses” mad.  And I hate using the word bitch in a derogatory way against a woman, but this bitch deserved it.  Last I heard, she was fired after being the target of some investigations into the school’s admissions practices.

I’m sad, but also pissed off and relieved, too.  Sad because a major part of my past is gone.  Pissed off that a bunch of hedge fund managers ran a once proud school into the ground, and relieved that my kids won’t go there and repeat my mistakes.

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

THIS IS ENOUGH TO MURDER 37 MILLION PEOPLE. THE ENTIRE POPULATIONS OF METRO NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES, AND WASHINGTON. 😡

COMBINED WITH THE PHILADELPHIA BUST, THIS WOULD ALSO KILL EVERYONE IN CHICAGO AND HOUSTON.

Add it to the Nebraska Fentanyl bust, and you murder all of Dallas, San Francisco, Boston, and St. Louis.

We are at war with the global Mob and several enemy nation-states. This is bioweapon lethality on the level of nuclear weapons, with the worst-case nuclear scenario death tolls. WAKE UP AND ACT LIKE WE’RE AT WAR. BECAUSE THESE PEOPLE WANT YOUR KIDS DEAD. AND YOU.

AND STOP FUCKING PUTTING THEIR AGENTS ON TELEVISION. THANKS.

 

 

PRIESTS & RELIGION

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

Last year, the Trump admin got caught suppressing a federal study showing that two toxic chemicals were present at much higher levels in our drinking water than previously thought. Now, the Trump admin is refusing to regulate those chemicals.

My latest…

Trump team is trying to keep toxic chemicals in our drinking water The administration is refusing to protect Americans from cancer-causing chemicals in the nation’s water supply. shareblue.com       

The reason they’re refusing to regulate the two chemicals (PFOA & PFOS) under the Safe Drinking Water Act? Because corporations like 3M, as well as the Defense Department, would be on the hook for billions of dollars in cleanup efforts.

i.e., the Trump administration is putting industry interests and corporate profits over the health & safety of an estimated 110 million Americans who are at risk of being exposed to drinking water contaminated with toxic chemicals.

Here’s where the scandal started, when the Trump administration got caught covering up a major federal study on toxic chemicals in our drinking water because they wanted to avoid a “public relations nightmare.”

New emails reveal Trump’s EPA buried major toxic drinking water study The White House and the EPA suppressed a report showing dangerous levels of toxic chemicals in the U.S. water supply because they feared it would cause a ‘public relations nightmare,’ according to… shareblue.com       

 

ELECTIONS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Arizona Sen. Martha McSally, whose fundraising practices have drawn scrutiny in the past, appears to have accepted more than $270,000 in excessive campaign contributions during the recent midterm campaign, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Federal candidates can collect $2,700 from a single donor during a primary election, followed by an additional $2,700 from the same person during the general election.

But the federal agency flagged dozens of contributions to McSally from more than 60 donors that appear to exceed those limits, including one who cut a $10,000 check during the general election alone, according to an analysis of FEC records. The agency said in a letter on Monday that McSally has until early March to correct any record-keeping issues, or refund the money.

While many campaigns regularly cut refund checks when donors give too much, a spokesman for McSally said she can’t control how much her supporters give. He said that her campaign is reviewing the matter.

 

THINKING AHEAD

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

Oh hey, I told you this would be more interesting. Particularly Lorber and his relationship with Trump + Russians. Lorber leads to more RU. So why would Jr call a business partner who is a family tie to RU Business, involved in Trump Tower Moscow plans at one point, and getting RU to invest in Trump, during all this meeting with the RU about “adoptions” stuff? (Its an earlier iteration of Trump Tower Moscow) One last thing, Lorber was at Trump tower the day before(along with some other rich folks) as Trump was trying to raise funds. So we still don’t know the content of the calls obviously, but I imagine the cover will be “It was about fundraising”

 

 

 

That’s it for Thursday.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen on Friday, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we get something weird.  Why?  It’s Friday, that’s why.  Weird shit always happens on a Friday.

If I hear anything else about those sealed dockets from DC, I’ll keep updating.  They could be anything, but they could be something too.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

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