Casual Observation

4 Comments

1. 

   zoomar2 on July 14, 2018 at 9:07 am

   “The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it-and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tennis with. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts’ content. And we can even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently.”

   ― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

2. 

   mainsailset on July 14, 2018 at 9:31 am

   Yes, the answer’s in the question.

   Last night on Richard Engel’s piece on Turnburry the golfing magazine fellow he interviewed commented that ‘no, one doesn’t own a golf course to make money’, they are money pits.

   The Financial Times piece on the Toronto property got into some pretty good detail.

   Once a money launderer always a money launderer.

3. 

   Arthur Gilroy on July 14, 2018 at 10:21 am

   Yes, Booman!!!

   That is where Trump can be taken down.

   Not exclusively in his relations concerning Putin, but in his extensive criminal dealings with lesser Putins. Vladimir Putin himself is a high-level gangster. His is the highest level possible. He is a stupendously successful career intelligence officer who has risen to be capo di tutti capi of the most dangerous, unimited-by-any-laws-whatsoever gang the world has ever seen…a state gang, run by other intelligence professionals and in possession of a nuclear-armed, international-level military as its enforcement arm. Putin himself will never be taken down and his criminal dealings will most likely never be conclusively proven.

   But Trump? In comparison to Putin, he is an amateur. He has been dealing with the Fat Tonys and Roy Cohns of this world for 30+ years. His criminal trail is so easy to recognize that everybody and his brother with an ounce of intelligence can see it. Plus, the structure of the U.S. justice system is…if it has not already been too compromised to work…so complex and so diversified that it doesn’t take a judicial genius to see what’s up. As crooked as are the state governments of NY + NJ, they are not so crooked that a determined prosecutor cannot reach unshakable conclusions about Trump’s criminal liabilities.

   Putin?

   There will never be any real proofs of his criminality. He is too smart, too successful and too vicious a gangster. Potential witnesses against Putin have been thoroughly warned to keep their mouths shut by any number of various international assassinations…and also thoroughly bought off with positons in the global kleptocracy atop which Putin sits…and he will remain in power until some karmic dead reckoning takes him down.

   Trump, on the other hand?

   An easy target.

   As I wrote in my recent post here (Trump is Captured by the Russians? Maybe, Maybe Not. Try Other Approaches):

   Until I see proof of [Trump’s] treason…not surmise, not rumor, not the maunderings of various and sundry pundits, not the guilt of selected underlings (Still largely unproven in a court of law, however likely.)…but solid, court-of-law proof, I will reserve that particular judgement. I think that he is a stupid, evil, meanspirited hustler who wants to bring this country to its knees and then rebuild it with him as the Boss of all Bosses, but I really don’t know if he is under the sway of other Bosses. He’s just playing world politics the same way as he played NYC politics…allying with whatever other criminals that he thinks might be able to help him win.

   That is guilt enough for me, and I fervently hope that the Mueller investigation not only proves that guilt but splashes it dramatically over the entire media system.

   This post of yours makes good sense to me. Let us take him down on his domestic criminality instead of wasting years trying to prove the criminality of his Russian dealings.You can subpoena any number of Russians until you run out of paper. They ain’t testifying because they don’t want to encounter a novichok-laced doorknob at the end of a day of peaceful thievery. End of story.

   The only reason that I can see not do so…and not to have been doing so since it began to dawn on the DC establishment that Trump might be able to stage some sort of soft coup over several years…is that an investigation of that sort might upend a number of rocks under which important people inside of that DC establishment…DemRats and Ratpublicans alike…have been hiding for decades.

   I say…let the rocks tumble where they may. Maybe that thorough “swamp-cleaning” of which Donald Trump trumpeted will happen no matter how full of shit he was when he used that line to get elected.

   Let us pray.

   Let us pray that this line of investigation is continued and supported.

   Or…continue to be preyed upon.

   Later…

   AG

4. 

   Sawgrass on July 14, 2018 at 2:05 pm

   The Money Tree lending rates that he received are so high that they are usurious treasonous.