As many of you will remember, Deutsche Bank isn’t just any bank. As I noted in the first post I wrote about Trump’s ties to Russia and Vladimir Putin back on July 23rd, 2016, by the mid-90s, every major US bank had blackballed Donald Trump. as the Times put it in 2016, “Several bankers on Wall Street say they are simply not willing to take on what they almost uniformly referred to as ‘Donald risk.'” None would do business with him. With one big exception: Deutsche Bank.
Deutsche Bank of course is not actually an American bank. But it has a major business in the US. And it was the bank’s effort to gain a bigger foothold in the US that seems to have been behind the special relationship with Trump.
As The Financial Times put it last year, in the middle 1990s, Deutsche was looking for a foothold in the US and “the bank saw a niche in serving rich developers who had hit a few bumps along the way, such as Harry Macklowe and Ian Bruce Eichner, both celebrated owners and losers of New York real estate.” Donald Trump fit the bill to a tee.
Mmph.
Would trump wait? Hannity is already blaming a democrat. Fuck them. They did this
This X100000000000000000000
There are few people in recent times that could so savagely destroy someone in a sentence or two like Hitchens could. I wish we could read columns from him now on you know who
This bit was always amazing to me:
HITCHENS: No. I repeat. Jerry Falwell lived on hatred and superstition and indignity. He preached dislike of people whose lives he knew nothing about. He raised money from credulous...
HANNITY: You don't know anything about his life.
HITCHENS: Excuse me, sir. You can either ask on to have -- ask my opinion or you may not. But I don't have to be here if you're going to take that attitude.
HANNITY: You could leave.
HITCHENS: You spend the first half by saying I have no right to an opinion you asked me on to express. Now you're tiring me out. I repeat, though...
HANNITY: What I said was your opinion was thoughtless. What you wrote was crude and mean and hateful. That's what I said.
HITCHENS: You took up all the time for my answer with your long, rather unlettered question.
HANNITY: Oh, OK.
HITCHENS: Jerry Falwell made a career out of sponsoring dislike and superstition, said that people he didn't like were going to hell, said the United States deserved to be attacked by Islamic fascists, said that he believed that people would be raptured into heaven, leaving all the rest of us to wallow behind.
I think his death is a deliverance. And if you say that someone who occasionally makes a chargeable donation is a good person, then you have to say that Hamas and Hezbollah, who do all of this charitable giving and charitable organizing, are the same.
So now we're rounding up legal immigrants. Are we gonna cage them up as well? Fucking sick.
Relevant:
"Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not?-Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, 'everyone' is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have....
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked-if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in - your nation, your people - is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."
- Milton Mayer
"Hey kid... way to be back at your desk."
"Thanks chief, just doing my best to get you spiderman... like you asked"
J.K. Simmons voice
"Damnit, Parker! I need photos to sustain my homosexual obsession with Spiderman!"
They can do so right here
This thread restored a good bit of faith in my country and the citizens within it.
Stay classy, fellow Redditors.
sees eagle
wipes single tear
not pay taxes
Undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars in federal taxes each year
The best estimates come from research by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, DC, think tank, which suggests that about half of undocumented workers in the United States file income tax returns. The most recent IRS data, from 2015, shows that the agency received 4.4 million income tax returns from workers who don’t have Social Security numbers, which includes a large number of undocumented immigrants. That year, they paid $23.6 billion in income taxes.
Those undocumented workers paid taxes for benefits they can’t even use, like Social Security and Medicare. They also aren’t eligible for benefits like the earned income tax credit. But the IRS still expects unauthorized immigrants to file their taxes, and many of them do so.
Huh...
refuse to learn language
English Proficiency of Immigrants
Immigrants in California often speak English quite well. Among immigrants who arrived in the last 10 years, 6% speak only English and an additional 47% report that they speak English very well or well. The most common language spoken among California immigrants is Spanish—53% report speaking Spanish at home, 20% of whom report speaking English “not at all.”
Thirteen percent of Californian immigrant children ages 5 to 18 do not speak English well or at all. Second-generation children (with at least one parent born outside the U.S.) speak English at higher levels of fluency—only 4% do not speak English or do not speak it well. By the third generation (both parents born in the U.S.), all young people report that they speak English at least “well,” and the vast majority (96%) do not report speaking another language at home.
Huh...
welfare benefits
Immigrants Don't Drain Welfare. They Fund It.
Native-born Americans aren’t footing the bill for immigrants so much as immigrants are contributing to a welfare system that many of them can't take advantage of.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 cut back on welfare extended to immigrants. It categorized green card holders and refugees granted asylum as “qualified,” and all other immigrants—including undocumented workers and many people lawfully here in the United States—as “not qualified” and therefore ineligible for welfare. But the law stipulated that even qualified immigrants had to spend five years in the United States before they could apply for benefits like Medicaid, food stamps, or cash assistance for families with children. Since that major welfare reform, some states have responded by providing for immigrants with programs that offer health care to the children of immigrants or pregnant mothers, and a few states—like California and New York—offer nutritional or cash assistance. But those efforts are mostly limited to qualified residents, while all other immigrants are still almost universally banned from receiving welfare.
Huh...
vote in elections
Fact-check: Did 3 million undocumented immigrants vote in this year's election?
News 21, a national investigative reporting project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, found just 56 cases of noncitizens voting between 2000 and 2011.
A report by the liberal Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that most cases of noncitizens voting were accidental. "Although there are a few recorded examples in which noncitizens have apparently registered or voted, investigators have concluded that they were likely not aware that doing so was improper," reads the 2007 report.
States that have tried to purge noncitizens from voter rolls, meanwhile, have found even government data lacking.
In 2012, Florida Governor Rick Scott’s administration started an effort trying to crack down on noncitizens voting by comparing driver's license data against voter rolls.
Through this process the Florida Department of State created a list of 182,000 potential noncitizens that had voted. That number was whittled down to 2,700, then to about 200 before the purge was stopped amid criticism that the data was flawed given the number of false positives — including a Brooklyn-born World War II vet.
Ultimately, only 85 people were removed from the voting rolls. State officials began to pursue a second attempt at a purge in advance of the 2014 election but then abandoned that effort, too.
Hmmm...
Don't bother arguing. This one's dumb enough to repost this.
Oh, it's not for OP. It's for anyone who might be drawn in by this racist horseshit.
Of course he won't. This is finally it. This is the entire reason the GOP climbed into bed with Trump, the Nazis, and the conspiracy wingnuts. The ability to appoint some completely, wholly unqualified, young enough to impact multiple generations, partisan hack to the highest court in the land.
Democracy is dead. Enjoy the new American Kleptocracy brought about by the greatest politicians enormous sums of dirty money can buy.
Democracy is dead. Enjoy the new American Kleptocracy brought about by the greatest politicians enormous sums of dirty money can buy.
Fuck that. This country belongs to all of us. Did the Republicans say "Democracy is dead" when Obama had a SCOTUS pick? No, they fucking hustled and stole that shit. You're telling us we gotta just bend over and take it now?
If you want something, fucking fight for it. If you're not willing to work for it, then it never held any value to you in the first place.
laughs
😐
cries
That’s a solidly conservative court for the next few decades.
Kennedy was a Reagan appointed Republican. They'll just be replacing a conservative with a conservative. It's not like RBG is retiring.
That was always there. They just put perfume lipstick on it before going out in public with it.
Now they can just roll right out of bed and hate minorities in their pajamas.
American loses its way
Which one?
So it's bad to be old unless you're Bernie Sanders.
/thread
I remember debating exactly this with a Trump supporter right after the election.
China is playing the thousand-year game while America is measuring quarterly growth like a bunch of kids measuring dicks.
Remember when WWII caused the reins of power to slowly slip away from England and into the hands of the United States?
Trump is launching the mantle of world leader at China with warp speed. I look forward to all the Trump supporters of today telling their grand children about how "we almost made America great again" before sucking on the teet of Chinese global leadership.
Lol!
One day, maybe, Dems will fight as hard to keep a stolen seat as Reps fight to keep a country white.
Both 5-4 decisions. The right wing landed a huge win when they stole the seat that went to Gorsuch.
Makes you wish Democrats took that shit more seriously, doesn't it?
It makes me wish election day was a national holiday (replacing Columbus Day). A good portion of people who would vote Dem are minimum wage workers who can’t afford the time off. A good portion don’t have vehicles and can’t afford the time it would take to bus to the booth and back, or stand in line at the booth for hours on end. A good portion is imprisoned or have a felony record and have paid their debt to society.
You’re right. More Dems should vote. But until I attribute the lack of voter turnout to laziness, I’d like to see the institutionalized barriers removed.
I mostly meant the elected Dems who kept bringing a banana to a gun fight and wouldn't call that stolen nomination what it was.
If there's one thing Slick Willy knows, it's throats...
Something probably like "Well, see, this is about POWER... powering the nation to make Korea GREAT AGAIN, not some weapons program. Koreans need power too you know!" Specifically "Korea" and not "North Korea" because I don't expect them to understand the geography. It's just Korea for them.
But what I love is how they went from "Rocket Man literally needs to die!" to "Trump did a great thing, and Kim is such a good guy for working with him!"
[removed]
I don't really care, do u?
It's a shame his writings aren't taught more. I'm ashamed to say this is the first time I've ever read this beautiful prose
White privilege is your people's history being taught as the main curriculum while mine is taught as an elective.
Seems like it could go either way. Putting someone in charge of outreach and knocking down barriers? Great.
Creating an uneven playing field for getting into the business? not so much.
If a couch has been without it's left legs for generations, replacing the missing legs isn't upsetting the balance. It's restoring it.
To be fair, Trump is at minimum, the perfect caricature for the US. He fits all of the stereotypes those overseas have about us....so this statement is likely to fall at least a little flat.
You know those movies where a young starlet gets dragged into the glitz and glamour of the limelight but flies too close to the sun and winds up in a cheap Vegas motel blown-out on drugs while staring heartbroken into the dirty reflection of a coke mirror?
That starlet is the USA. Trump is the reflection in the mirror.
This is just... Kinda sad, like I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but this is just childish lol
this is just childish lol
I was just trying to be presidential... 😢
Trump changes his mind whenever it suits him. I still don't understand how people support this guy
They don't support Trump, they support the radical white victimhood he represents. They can switch policy positions on a dime because it's not about policy it's about white identity, specifically a pathological need to prove to themselves that their version of America is the right one.
Trump repeatedly tears down Obama policies, so that he can slap his name on a new one. It doesn't matter what the policy is, all that matters to his voters is that Obama's name is remove from it so they can finally be free of all the exhausting hypocritical hatred they feel for it.
Why the fuck aren’t people protesting his rallies?
Because we can use social media to complain about things which gives us a temporary satiation of grievance.
I'm not trying to be snarky or anything, it's actually the truth. Every minute spent on a phone or computer is one less minute spent IRL airing dissatisfaction with the government.
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Since February 2018
