Oct. 3 Open Thread: Stop the Presses, Trump Is a Tax Cheat

Filed in National, Open Thread by on October 3, 2018

Raise your hand if you thought the Trump family fortune was achieved by following all tax laws to the letter. Yeah, thought so. Still, the New York Times deserves credit for investing thousands of man-hours to ferreting out all the ways the Trumps cheated the IRS, and for determining that the “$1 million loan” with which Donnie Two Scoops founded his “self-made” “fortune” was 413 times larger than that. Republicans are busy pretending it doesn’t matter.

Americans love to bandy about the words “genius” and “brilliant” but clearly have no idea what they actually mean. I keep reading, despite all the evidence available, that Brett Kavanaugh is “brilliant,” a fiction that the past week ought to have dispeled, and that Kanye West is a “genius,” something he disproved again on Saturday Night Live. He praises Trump because he knows a malignant narcissist when he sees one, mainly from admiring himself in the mirror so much. I think his ultimate goal is to be a bigger ass than his wife’s.

Interesting story on population changes in congressional districts that will help determine the post-2020 census redistricting. Texas is still growing fast, I suppose because people who know they’re bound for Hell figure they might as well get used to it beforehand.

More bad news on the climate change front: feedback loops are speeding up the warming in the Arctic, which in turn is speeding up the warming elsewhere. Worth remembering that Brett Kavanaugh will drown with the rest of us.

Americans are really fucked up when it comes to sex. How else to explain the opposition to the first proposed sex-robot brothel in Houston. They can’t give a rational reason it should be illegal — it’s pretty hard to find a victim in this “crime” — but they just know it should be. The ones who should be complaining are the sex workers who would lose their jobs to automation.

Speaking of sex, I’m leaving out all the Kavanaugh coverage because it would be outdated by noon.

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  1. Another tidbit from the Trump dump was that The Donald threatened his old man into changing his will while the old man was on his deathbed. He wanted more than the other siblings.

  2. RE Vanella says:

    https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/senate-judiciary-members-escorted-through-protests-by-police

    “Senate Judiciary Members Escorted Through Protests by Police”
    Graham and Kennedy among those escorted near Senate subway

    They are on the run. Keep up the pressure. Calls, Personal visits. Tighten the vise. Go get ’em.

  3. Alby says:

    Oh, there’s tons of great stuff in there, which is why Fox and the GOP are trying to dismiss the entire story — all 8 1/2 pages of it — rather than trying to refute it point-by-point, which they can’t.

    Their main hope is that the public will decide tl;dr.

  4. RE Vanella says:

    “The secret of a great fortune made without apparent cause is soon forgotten, if the crime is committed in a respectable way.”
    —–Honoré de Balzac

  5. Jason330 says:

    One of the most revealing things was the extent to which the media allowed itself to get played by Fred then Donald. They love the myth of the self-made, hard working, virtuous rich man.

  6. Mike Dinsmore says:

    Hi, Alby,

    I hope that you meant “sex-robot brothel,” and not “sex-robot brother.” No wonder the rednecks in Houston are opposing it!