You Know You Have A Problem When Conservative GOP Congressman Darryl Issa Is Calling For A Special Prosecutor To Look Into Trump’s Ties With Russia And Russia Intelligence Operatives. This Is The Same GOP Congressman That Led The Benghazi Investigation With The Sole Purpose Of Indicting Hillary Clinton And Her Role In The Attacks On The U.S. Embassy In Libya By Libyan Militants.
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Nancy Pelosi Has Similarly Called for Such An Investigation — That Would Involve A Special Prosecutor.
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It Just May Be That There Are Still “Some” Republicans In Congress That Are Actually Genuinely Concerned About The Plight Of This Country When It Comes To Foreign Involvement In Our Political Processes. That They Are Genuinely Concerned, Truly Genuinely Concerned That Our Very Sovereignty Is At Stake And Is Being Threatened By A Foreign Power.
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Susan Collins (As A Ranking Republican Senator On The Senate Select Intelligence Committee) Has Made It Quite Clear That She Will Insist On Calling General Michael Flynn For Questioning And For Using A Subpoena — If Necessary — To Request Donald Trump’s Tax Returns — With The Clear Implication That Perhaps There Will Be Evidence Of Trump’s Financial Ties To Russia That Leaves Him Compromised And Vulnerable To Blackmail By The Russians.
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There Is Overwhelming Circumstantial Evidence To Suggest That Donald Trump Has “Sinister” Ties To Russia – Ties That Go Far Beyond Merely Traveling Back And Forth Between The United States And Russia. Trump Has Several Business Associates, Originally From Russia, That Have Provided Him, Trump, With Ample Financial Wherewithal Just To Keep The Trump Business Enterprise Chugging Along.
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One Of Them Is Felix Sater, A Convicted Felon With An Astonishing Ability To Acquire Stinger Missiles From Inside Russia For The CIA. The FIM-92 Stinger is a Man-Portable Air-Defense System (MANPADS) that operates as an infrared homing surface-to-air missile (SAM). It can be adapted to fire from a wide variety of ground vehicles and helicopters Sater Also Kept Money Flowing Into The Trump Organization From His Underworld Contacts Inside Russia. Many Of The Trump Condos Inside Trump Tower Were Bought And Paid With Russian Money.
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Another One Is Tevfik Arif, Originally From The Former Soviet Republic Of Kazakhstan. Tevfik Went From The Ministry of Commerce and Trade In 1991 Making A Small But Steady Salary To Becoming A Billionaire Within Less Than A Decade. Somehow he acquired ownership of the Speciality Chemicals Trading Company, “an export-import business trading in rare metals, chrome, and raw materials.” Shortly thereafter, once Kazakhstan gained it’s independence from Russia, he took over ACCP, a chromium plant in Aktobe, Kazakhstan.
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Then, There Is Tamir Sapir, An Ashkenazi Jew who was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, He Goes From Being A Cab Driver In New York City Earning Between $300-$400 A Week To Being A Billionaire In Just A Few Short Years. So, supposedly this guy went from sleeping in his cab to being a billionaire because he quickly made enough money selling VCR’s and Walkmans to make major investments in Russian carbamide which he then used to buy a skyscraper for 17 million dollars. In the process, he was invited to join the Council for American-Soviet Trade and meet with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.
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Now, these individuals ALL come together with Donald Trump In 2006. They all were business partners on the Trump SoHo project in lower Manhattan in the early 2000’s. The project was a collaboration between the Trump Organization, the Bayrock Group (of Arif and Sater), and the (Tamir) Sapir Organization. This was the last building project that Trump engaged in before becoming President.
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The potential Russian intelligence connections of Arif and Sapir are present considering their unlikely rises to great wealth. Felix Sater is already known for his well-established connections to the Russian mafia, and he was also turned back against the Russian mob and probably Russian intelligence, too, by our own FBI.
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So, Yes, Darrell Issa Is Right To Suggest The Appointment Of A Special Prosecutor To Look Into Donald Trump’s Ties With Russia. The Circumstantial Evidence Surrounding Donald Trump And His “Involvement” With With Russians Of Dubious Character Throws Up Red Flags All Too Self-Evident To Merely Gloss Over Or Ignore.
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Above All Else, Trump Truly Loves Money, Money For Its Own Sake. It’s His Very Identity. No One Goes To Such Great Lengths To “Remind” People That You Are, In Fact, A Billionaire Unless It Serves As A “Prop” Or “Crutch” For A Fragile Ego! And Trump Will Seek It Out, No Matter The Shadiness Of The Source!
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Unfortunately For Trump, Vladimir Putin Has Long Since Picked Up On Donald’s Trail — A Trail Littered With Dirty Deals Involving Dirty Russian Operatives Doing Dirty Deeds.
“A Big Shoe Just Dropped” Trump’s SoHo Project, the Mob, and Russian Intelligence
TalkingPointsMemo.Com BooManTribune.Com
JOSH MARSHALL by BooMan
Published — FEB. 19, 2017, 4:54 PM EDT Feb 20th, 2017 — 02:04:51 PM EST
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Donald Trump keeps saying that he has nothing to do with the Russians. Most recently, he made this claim in his White House press conference last week: “I can tell you, speaking for myself, I own nothing in Russia. I have no loans in Russia. I don’t have any deals in Russia.” He said it at a press conference in early January, too.
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Hopefully, you’ve already seen the New York Times piece from this weekend detailing how Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen took a dossier to Michael Flynn that had been provided to him by a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician named Andrii V. Artemenko and a Russian mob-connected former employee of the Trump Organization named Felix Sater.
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The dossier reportedly contained damaging information about the anti-Russian Ukrainian president, Petro O. Poroshenko, that the Trump administration could conceivably use to oust him. It also contained some kind of Russian-Ukrainian “peace plan” that would facilitate the lifting of sanctions on Russia.
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At this point — we need to stress the “real” importance behind the lifting of sanctions on Russia. The U.S.’s new Secretary of State — Rex Tillerson, was the FORMER CEO Of EXXON-MOBIL. In 2012 He entered negotiations with the Kremlin to join forces with the Russians to extrapolate nearly one-trillion dollars worth of oil that lay in the Arctic Ocean North Of Russia — just waiting to be brought up to the ground and sold for enormous revenues! With the invasion of the Ukraine by The Russians & Putin in 2014 President Obama placed severe sanctions on the Russians which also froze in place Rex Tillerson’s trillion-dollar Arctic Ocean oil venture agreement with the Russians.
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Now, back to the story @ hand — I don’t know how much attention it’s received. But the appearance of the name of Felix Sater in this new article in the New York Times is one of the biggest shoes I’ve seen drop on the Trump story in some time. — Trump said he barely knew who Sater was. But there is voluminous evidence that Sater, a Russian emigrant, was key to channeling Russian capital to Trump for years. Sater is also a multiple felon and at least a one-time FBI informant. Felix Sater is already known for his well-established connections to the Russian mafia, and he was also turned back against the Russian mob and probably Russian intelligence, too, by our FBI
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The new story explains that a group of Trump operatives, including top lawyer Michael Cohen and fired former campaign manager Paul Manafort, along with a pro-Putin Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andrii V. Artemenko and Mr. Sater are pushing President Trump on a ‘peace plan’ for Russia and Ukraine.
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Cohen recently met with Sater and Artemenko; and Cohen agreed to personally deliver the peace plan (actually a sealed envelope with documents detailing it) to the President when he met with him at the White House. Cohen says he left it with General Flynn days before Flynn was forced to resign.
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The backstory to all this is amazingly byzantine and murky. Let me try to cover the key points as simply as I can.
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Having spent some time studying the matter, the biggest red flags about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia and businessmen around Vladimir Putin have always been tied to the Trump SoHo building project in Lower Manhattan, from the first decade of this century. I base my knowledge of this on this rather cursory but still quite good April 2016 article from the Times and my own limited snooping around the Outer Boroughs Russian and Ukrainian emigre press. (I summarized the most salient details of the earlier Times article in Item #3 of this post.) This was a key project, perhaps the key project in the post-bankruptcy era in which Trump appeared heavily reliant on Russian funds to finance his projects. Sater was at the center of that project. The details only came to light after the project got bogged down in a complicated series of lawsuits.
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After the lawyers got involved, Trump said he barely knew who Sater was. But there is voluminous evidence that Sater, a Russian emigrant, was key to channeling Russian capital to Trump for years. Sater is also a multiple felon and at least a one-time FBI informant. Bayrock Capital, where he worked was located in Trump Tower and he himself worked as a special advisor to Trump. Again, read the Times article to get a flavor of his ties to Trump, the Trump SoHo project and Russia. For my money there’s no better place to start to understand the Trump/Russia issue.
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On its own, Trump’s relationship with Sater might be written off (albeit not terribly plausibly) as simply a sleazy relationship Trump entered into to get access to capital he needed to finance his projects. Whatever shadowy ties Sater might have and whatever his criminal background, Trump has long since washed his hands of him. (Again, we’re talking about most generous reads here.)
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But now we learn that Sater is still very much in the Trump orbit and acting as a go-between linking Trump and a pro-Putin Ukrainian parliamentarian pitching ‘peace plans’ for settling the dispute between Russia and Ukraine. (Artemenko is part of the political faction which Manafort helped build up in the aftermath of the ouster of his Ukrainian benefactor, deposed President Viktor Yanukovych.) Indeed, far, far more important, Cohen – who is very close to Trump and known for dealing with delicate matters – is in contact with Sater and hand delivering political and policy plans from him to the President.
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Were Cohen not involved, one might speculate that Sater is just up to yet another hustle, looking to parlay his one-time association with Trump into influence with the new President. Cohen hand delivering his messages to the President changes the picture considerably. How or why Cohen would do this, if for no other reason than the current massive scrutiny of Trump’s ties to Russia and Sater’s scandals, almost defies belief. But here we are.
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At this time there needs to be mentioned TWO OTHER CHARACTERS in this Trump-Russia saga. ONE IS THE MAN who hired Felix Sater despite his record of violence that landed him in prison and his felony conviction for a pump and dump stock scheme he ran in the 1990’s in league with Sammy ‘the Bull’ Gravano’s brother-in-law. That man would be Tevfik Arif.
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It should be noted here that the Yeltsin Era of the 1990s or the rise of Vladimir Putin, saw the Russian state sellling off state assets to KGB-connected or approved businessmen and intelligence officers who quickly formed into a ruling oligarchy. Mr. Arif’s rise from a hotel management functionary in the Commerce and Trade Ministry into a rare metals trader is highly, highly suspicious and ought to be looked at very carefully.
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The OTHER CHARACTER here is Tamir Sapir (nee Temur Sepiashvili), who died in 2014. An Ashkenazi Jew who was born in Tbilisi, Georgia.
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The FIRST OF THESE CHARACTERS,, Tevfik Arif, is originally from the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Kazakhstan. During the Soviet Era, he worked for seventeen years in Moscow for the Ministry of Commerce and Trade. He quit that job in 1991 as the USSR was dissolving and caught quite a break. Somehow he was able to parlay his experience (which focused mainly on hotel management) at the Commerce and Trade Ministry into ownership of the Speciality Chemicals Trading Company, “an export-import business trading in rare metals, chrome, and raw materials.” Shortly thereafter, once Kazakhstan gained it’s independence from Russia, he took over ACCP, a chromium plant in Aktobe.
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From there, he took his riches and built a hotel in Antalya, Turkey which was completed in 1999. This was obviously more in line with his career experience than handling rare metals. Then, in 2001, he came to America and created the BAYROCK GROUP, a real-estate development company based in Brooklyn.
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It was then that he hired Felix Sater and made him a part-owner and partner, and these two then got involved with Donald Trump.
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Mr. Sater, a Russian immigrant, had recently joined Bayrock at the behest of its founder, Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet-era commerce official originally from Kazakhstan. Bayrock, which was developing commercial properties in Brooklyn, proposed that Mr. Trump license his name to hotel projects in Florida, Arizona and New York, including Trump SoHo.
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The SECOND OF THESE CHARACTERS, Tamir Sapir, (nee Temur Sepiashvili), died in 2014. An Ashkenazi Jew who was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, in the former Soviet Union, he emigrated to Israel just prior to the outbreak of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. From there, he quickly re-emigrated to Kentucky where he worked as a laborer.
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Before long, he relocated to New York City, and became a cabbie — making, perhaps, $300-$400 per week.
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What happened next was either the work of Russian intelligence or one of the most surprising and unlikely success stories in history. According to the legend, Mr. Sapir and a fellow USSR emigrant named Sam Kislin pooled their savings and bought an electronics store on Broadway in Manhattan. They hoped to attract business from the Russian emigre community, but they had a different kind of luck.
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Former President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze played an important role in his success. “Once USSR’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Eduard Shevardnadze, visited my shop. One of his bodyguards, Murad Kazishvili, turned out to be my childhood friend. Back in the day, an organization existed called “Council for American-Soviet Trade”, in which over a hundred large American companies participated, among them “Occidental Petroleum Hammer” and “Pepsi-Cola”, which also had business ties with the USSR. With Murad’s help, I also joined this organization and went to Moscow with Vice-President Bush, who headed the Council,” Tamir says. According to him, during his stay in Moscow, one of his friends advised him to start exporting carbamide to America. This substance is necessary for oil production and during Soviet times it cost 5 times less than in the US. The Carbamide trade gave Tamir his first million and as he says, whet his appetite.
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He exported American clothing, footwear and tech to USSR while importing oil and oil products from there, investing profits into real estate in New York. Prices on real estate were low in 1995-1996: for example, a skyscraper that is now estimated to be worth approximately 1.5 billion dollars cost just 17 million back then. Sapir got incredibly lucky; according to his own words, it was nothing less than divine intervention. In 1997, real estate prices grew and property that Sapir bought for miniscule prices was sold for colossal amounts of money. This is how Sapir got his first billion.
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So, supposedly this guy went from sleeping in his cab to being a billionaire because he quickly made enough money selling VCR’s and Walkmans to make major investments in Russian carbamide which he then used to buy a skyscraper for 17 million dollars. In the process, he was invited to join the Council for American-Soviet Trade and meet with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.
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Now, here is where I tie all these individuals together with Donald Trump. They all were business partners on the Trump SoHo project in the early 2000’s. The project was a collaboration between the Trump Organization, the Bayrock Group (of Arif and Sater), and the (Tamir) Sapir Organization.
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The potential Russian intelligence connections of Arif and Sapir should be obvious considering their unlikely rises to great wealth. Felix Sater is already known for his well-established connections to the Russian mafia, and he was also turned back against the Russian mob and probably Russian intelligence, too, by our FBI.
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Recently unsealed federal court records show that Mr. Sater helped the government disrupt an organized crime ring on Wall Street and deal with an unexplained national security matter involving his foreign connections.
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So, ladies & gentlemen, there you have it. Some interesting business “associates” of the Donald who said just this past weekend —-> I have no business deals or connections with RUSSIA. Fat chance, DONALD, fat chance. You’re so-called TRUMP empire was propped up by Russian mob money & Russian intelligence-spawned money. Putin has you by the proverbial gonadys — which is Russian for BALLS.
NEWS BULLETIN BEFORE WE BEGIN With TONITE’S Podcast SUBJECT —-> How Is It That For 15-Days —-> The Vice-President – MIKE PENCE — Was Not Informed By The — President Himself, TRUMP —- Who Learned Himself — As A Result Of A “Warning” By the Interim But Soon-Fired Acting Attorney General — SALLY YATES – That On January 26, 2016 — His Nat’l Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn DID, IN FACT, Talk To The Russian Ambassador On December 28, 2016 — About Easing The SANCTIONS Levied By The Obama Administration — For Russian Hacking Intereference In The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election — On The VERY NEXT DAY — December 29, 2016 — That He — The Vice-President — Was Lied To By General Michael Flynn/The Former National Security Advisor! —-> Who Told The Vice-President That His Phone Calls To The Russian Ambassador —- DID NOT INCLUDE Any Mention Of U.S. Sanctions On Russia For Their Illegal Electronic Hacking In The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election —-> This Is Tantamount to AN “IRREPARABLE” Breach —-> At Such An EARLY Stage In This Presidency —-> Between The President AND The Vice-President!!! God Almighty!!! —-> How Does A Vice-President RECOVER From Something Like This! —-> It’s BEYOND COMPREHENSION OF A REASONABLE PERSON TO SEE HOW A VICE-PRESIDENT COULD CONTINUE ON AS A “LOYAL” SOLDIER!!!
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Flynn, was forced to resign this week over his failure to disclose phone conversations with the Russian ambassador about U.S. sanctions imposed on Moscow. Trump’s long-standing ties to Russia might explain why his policy is “noticeably weaker on Russia than on anything else,” said John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and Uzbekistan under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
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Trump told The Times of London in January he’d consider lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia for its military involvement in eastern Ukraine and alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential election to help Trump in return for a new nuclear arms reduction accord. In addition, Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed in a phone call last month possible collaboration in the fight against Islamic State and ways they might restore trade and economic ties.
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Herbst said Trump’s conciliatory comments about Russia are out of character for a businessman who prides himself as a tough negotiator. “He talks about driving hard bargains, and here he’s offering concessions right off the top,” Herbst said.
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Trump denied in recent tweets “conspiracy theories” about his ties to Russia.
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Here is a timeline of Trump’s known connections to Russia:
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1987: Trump was invited to Moscow by the Soviet ambassador to the United States to discuss luxury hotel developments. Trump later told Playboy magazine that his plans to build hotels in Moscow failed because the country “was out of control and the leadership knows it.” Four years later, on Christmas Day, the Soviet Union officially dissolved, and Russians who had been allowed to buy state-owned enterprises amassed enormous fortunes.
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1996: While wrapping up a series of bankruptcies in New York, Trump talked of building a replica of his Trump Tower in Moscow and traveled there to discuss renovating the Moskva and Rossiya hotels, accordin g to Bloomberg News. The bankruptcies led to a change in Trump’s business model: Instead of building projects from the ground up, he signed licensing agreements that in some cases gave him an ownership stake in properties that bore his name without putting up any of his own money. The Trump Organization continued to seek wealthy investors in Russia.
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Dozens of condominiums in Trump World Tower in midtown Manhattan were bought by Russians in the late 1990s, said Dolly Lenz, a real estate broker who sold many of the units. Many buyers sought an audience with Trump, whose business acumen they respected, Lenz said.
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Early 2000’s: The Trump Organization developed several projects abroad, many of them involving Russian money.
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2007: Trump debuted his Trump Super Premium Vodka at the Millionaire’s Fair in Moscow. Large orders for the gold-glazed spirit followed, but the brand fizzled by 2009, according to The New York Times.
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2008: Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., told investors in Moscow that the Trump Organization had trademarked the Donald Trump name in Russia and planned to build housing and hotels in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi, and sell licenses to other developers, the Russian daily Kommersant reported. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump Jr. said at the time. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
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Trump Jr. traveled to Russia a half-dozen times in 18 months looking for deals, but none materialized. He said there were plenty of investment opportunities, but the business environment was dangerous and trustworthy partners hard to find. “It really is a scary place,” he said, according to eTurboNews, an online business publication.
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2010: Trump’s next big U.S. project, the Trump SoHo in New York, was built with partner Bayrock Group, founded by Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet official.
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2013: Trump brought the Miss Universe Pageant to Moscow, funded by $20 million from Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov. The venue was Agalarov’s Crocus City Hall on the outskirts of Moscow. Trump took part in a music video with Agalarov’s son, Emin.
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2016: Trump’s presidential campaign manager, Paul Manafort, resigned in August amid reports that he worked on the political campaign of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had been forced to flee office because of his pro-Russian stance.
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Carter Page, a former Merrill Lynch investment banker in Moscow, was a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser until August, when Yahoo News reported that U.S. intelligence officials were investigating whether he had been communicating with Russian officials about lifting U.S. sanctions if Trump became president.
THE LIKELY CONCLUSION —- IT FINALLY GETS “KICKED” UPSTAIRS TO THE SUPREME COURT —- IN TIME —- AND
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IF THE 9TH “VACANT” SEAT ON THAT COURT IS FINALLY FILLED —- THE COURT CAN THEN RULE — ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.
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OTHERWISE,
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AS IT STANDS NOW, THERE’S ONLY 8 JUSTICES — 4 CONSERVATIVE ONES + 4 LIBERAL ONES —- SO, IN THE VERY LIKELY EVENT OF A TIE ON A RULING REGARDING THE MUSLIM TRAVEL BAN IT WILL CONSTITUTE NO RULING AT ALL AND THE LOWER FEDERAL COURTS RULING REMAIN IN PLACE AND IN EFFECT.
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THE PRACTICAL EFFECT IS —- THE TRAVEL BAN CONTINUES ON —- INDEFINITELY!
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EVEN IF THE SUPREME COURT GETS THAT 9TH SEAT FILLED, THEY ARE VERY UNLIKELY TO GO AGAINST A LOWER COURT’S RULING UNLESS THERE IS SOME SUBSTANTIAL PROCEDURAL IRREGULARITIES —- OR UNLESS THERE IS SOME “SOLID” MERIT IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATIONS “THREAT” OF A TERRORIST ATTACH — (WHICH THERE IS NOT —- IT’S A TOTALLY VAGUE CONJECTURE) —- AND SO, THE SUPREME COURT WILL SIMPLY THROW THE CASE BACK DOWN TO THE LOWER FEDERAL COURT(S) TO DEAL WITH AND WASH THEIR HANDS OF THE WHOLE SORDID AFFAIR!
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I’D LIKE TO SEE THE DRUMPF “TWEET” AFTER A SUPREME COURT RULING THAT GOES AGAINST HIM — GOD ALMIGHTY, THAT WOULD BE “SPECIAL”!
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IT’D GO SOMETHING LIKE THIS —- WELL, THOSE GODLESS, ELITISTS, MUSLIM-LOVING, UNAMERICAN JUDGES HAVE PUT THEIR OWN VILE SELF-INTERESTS AHEAD OF THE COUNTRY’S AND HAVE ASSURED THE GOOD, HARD-WORKING, GOD-FEARING CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY THAT THE MUSLIMS WILL COME IN AND BLOW THE SHIT OUT OF THIS PLACE AND WE’LL JUST HAVE TO ROLL OVER AND PLAY DEAD!!!
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ACTUALLY, DONALD, THE ONLY ONE THAT’S GOING TO “ROLL OVER” IS YOU, AFTER WE HANDCUFF YOU AND LEAD YOU TO THE ESCORT VAN READY TO TAKE YOU “OUT OF THE COUNTRY” —-> (TO AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION!) —–> SAME FOR MIKE PENCE! —–> SAME FOR STEVE BANNON —-> SAME FOR STEVE MILLER —-> SAME FOR NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR – GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN!
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I HEAR GUANTANAMO IS NOT THAT BAD, ONCE YOU GET USED TO SOME OF THE SLIGHT DISCOMFORTS — HEY TRUMP, MAYBE YOU COULD BUNK IN WITH ABU BAKR AL BAGHDADI — YOUR ISIS BUDDY!!!
Yes, Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump ran a restaurant, bar, and brothel in British Columbia.
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The story starts with Friedrich Trump, Donald Trump’s Grandfather, left Germany at the age of 16 and arrived in New York but soon migrated out west in search of riches.
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The gold fever at this time — the Canadian Klondike Gold Strike — carried him to Bennet, British Columbia – Canada, where, along with a business partner – Ernest Levin, they constructed The Arctic Hotel + Restaurant in 1898 on Front Street. Within a couple of years they made a small fortune selling booze and offering “sporting ladies” to the tired + thirsty gold miners of that area. With an estimated 100,000 prospectors setting out for the Klondike Gold Country Of Northern Canada there was plenty of money to be made providing “services” to these men.
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It was open around the clock with “private boxes for ladies and parties,” according to an advertisement in the Dec. 9, 1899 edition of the Bennett Sun newspaper. The boxes typically included a bed and scale for weighing gold dust used to pay for “services,” according to a three-generational biography by Gwenda Blair, who traced the origins of the Trump family’s wealth. Of course, in the rough-and-tumble frontier towns of that era, the Arctic’s business model built on food, booze and sex was common.
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When a train route came through the area drastically diminishing the influx of miners into Bennett, Friedrich + partner literally took the hotel apart, plank by plank and relocated it further north in the town of Whitehorse to carry on business as usual.
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Friedrich left Whitehorse in 1901 and after unsuccessfully trying to relocate to his native Kallstadt, Germany ended up moving to Queens, New York City and took his Gold Rush money and invested it in vacant lots around the New York area. By this time, Friedrich was a wealthy man. He had accumulated enough wealth — equivalent to a half a million euros in 2014 terms – to end up funding the Trump family’s first residential real estate investments in the New York area.
Trump’s done everything but invite Vladimir Putin to the Inauguration for a front-row seat on Friday, January 20th. Hell, there’s still time, would anybody really be surprised to see the 5-6-inch Soviet strongman sitting in the audience on the afternoon of the Innauguration.
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They’re bosom buddies now, they’d be great together camping in the wilds of Canada or Upper Michigan – canoing down the various backwater channels through the back country and stopping for the night to camp out along the water’s edge. Pitching tent and kicking back and drinking vodka and telling lies and swatting flies.
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Trump is a virtual echo chamber for Putin. He sees a strongman in Putin, just like himself (or so he fancies). Let’s do away with NATO — (Putin says, ok!) — let’s do away with the European Union – (Putin couldn’t agree more!) — let’s forget about all of this Russian Hacking “nonsense” — (Putin couldn’t agree more!) — AND — let’s lift the sanctions on Russia imposed for their invasion of the Ukraine in 2014 and get on with the the arctic ocean oil business – to the tune of 1/2 trillion dollars of oil revenues – (& thereby greatly benefiting Exxon-Mobil – the soon-to-be Secretary of State – Rex Tillerson’s former company where he served as the CEO).
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It won’t be long before the U.S. and the Soviet Union will be conducting joint military training exercises as well as neval exercises. Then Trump and Putin will come up with an idea to construct a treaty between the two countries wherein neither one can do anything militarily “offensive” without consulting the other. Let’s take it one step further, how about a mutual nonagression pact, like Nazi Germany and The Soviet Union entered into in 1939.
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Trump is certainly taking note of the way Vladimir Putin dominates the media in the Soviet Union — exercise virtually total control of content dissemination. The press is throttled in the Soviet Union, Putin sets the stage and doles out the “access” to the press but with a stranglehold on the content that gets broadcast out to the Russian people. Trump is already “thinking out loud” about clamping down on the U.S. press, stigmatizing whole networks or individual network reporters – in public – continually calling their news as merely “fake news”, bypassing the press altogether and relying exclusively on twitter tweets and even making moves to oust the press from the West Wing of the White House and/or instead invite tv + radio talk show hosts and web bloggers to take part of the White House press briefings as opposed to “real” journalists.
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In short, the U.S. — The Trump Administration — AND — the Soviet Union + Putin’s Kremilin — will come to resemble more and more of each other and will ultimately become “joined at the hip” and we will have, in effect, the United States Of Russia.
DISCLAIMER: THE “FOLLOWING” POST WAS TAKEN — IN ITS “ENTIRETY” — FROM A JANUARY 6, 2017 POST BY “THE RUDE PUNDIT” —-> (http://rudepundit.blogspot.com) —- WELL-KNOWN EAST COST BLOGGER!
For The AUDIO Version Of This, Click On BELOW ——>
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Fuck You, Rural Elitists —
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Yesterday, an opinion piece in the New York Times started this way: “One recent morning, I sat near two young men at a coffee shop here whom I’ve known since they were little boys. Now about 18, they pushed away from the table, and one said: ‘Let’s go to work. Let the liberals sleep in.’ The other nodded.” The writer, Robert Leonard, is a local news director at a radio station in Knoxville, Iowa, and he assured us that the young men are hard workers at tough jobs, like washing dishes and cleaning up at a restaurant, and, of course, farming. They are so goddamned salt of the earth because “They are conservative, believe in hard work, family, the military and cops, and they know that abortion and socialism are evil, that Jesus Christ is our savior, and that Donald J. Trump will be good for America.”
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And all I could think when I read it was “Fuck you, you elitist fucking assholes. Why is your judgmental ass more valid than mine?”
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The piece is titled, “Why Rural America Voted for Trump,” and it is another seemingly rational argument trying to show that one’s neighbors or one’s relatives or one’s friends didn’t vote for Trump because of “ignorance, racism, sexism, nationalism, Islamophobia,” or other such things. No, it was that rural Americans have a different philosophy. They “think the liberal worldview creates unnecessary rules and regulations that cripple the economy and take away good jobs that may belong to them or their neighbor. Public school systems and colleges are liberal tools of indoctrination that go after what we love and value most — our children.”
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We’re all supposed to nod our heads and respect these shitheels while they mock liberals and are ennobled by the rank nonsense of those who desperately want to justify the racism, etc. because otherwise they have to admit that they are surrounded by horrible, hateful fucks. But I won’t do that precisely because I have more respect for these dumbass motherfuckers than any of the wannabe Jane Goodalls observing the ways of the chimps. How do I have more respect? Because I don’t treat them like fucking children or a hidden Amazon tribe whose language is clicks and trills. We’re talking about fucking grown-ups who make fucking grown-up decisions, and I’m gonna treat them like grown-ups. And their attitudes towards urban Americans are no less elitist than the dumbass motherfuckers on the coasts who lump everyone else into fly-over country.
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Here’s the deal. There are a whole bunch of us city liberals who came from rural or southern or whatever areas. I’ve told this story a hundred goddamn times, but this pinheaded, Ivory Tower-humping leftist lived in a trailer park in Florida with a trucker father and a working mom. At 13, I started working unloading semis at warehouses after school. My family was on welfare, including food stamps, and when my father died, we were on Social Security to survive in the south, and we worked our asses off to get out of that hole. I know a shit-ton of other people who have a similar M.O. and now live in New York or L.A. and a shit-ton who continue to live in rural areas. So don’t fucking preach to me about the goodness and grace of conservative rural people or the white working class.
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It’s all bullshit. The rest of Leonard’s column is about how it seems like cities in red states are taken care of by their government, but not the rural parts of the state, where the roads need to be improved and there is a need for police and firefighters and EMTs: “To rural Americans, sometimes it seems our taxes mostly go to making city residents live better. We recognize that the truth is more complex, particularly when it comes to social programs, but it’s the perception that matters — certainly to the way most people vote.”
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And there you have the reason why liberals are called “elitist.” We actually know that most of our taxes go to the Republican-run states. We aren’t fucking hypocrites who condemn government, elect people who want to shrink government, and then are pissed off when the government doesn’t offer enough services. We don’t get our news from conspiracy theorists and liars. Are there excesses on the left? Of course. We’re fuckin’ human. But when one group is inclusive of all races and religions and genders and sexual orientations and more, while the other pines for a time when white Christians ran everything, it’s pretty damn clear who the real elitists are.
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What you’re calling “elitism” is just simply not being ignorant. We don’t have our heads shoved up Jesus’s ass. And when the left gets angry because of how fucking dumb some of the shit coming out of rural and red mouths is, we’re told we need to understand what they believe. No, we’re just gonna say that stupid is stupid.
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You can stop explaining the white working class rural conservative Christian farming folk, hot-takers and self-justifiers. Instead, why don’t you explain liberalism to them? Why don’t you explain that jobs are drying up and communities are dying not because of abortion and same-sex marriage but because of Republican economic policies that have favored the wealthy, most of whom live in cities, including a certain president-elect they voted for who took advantage of those very policies in order to stay rich? Ultimately, though, it won’t matter. Because despite every fucking word to the contrary, the real problem is that those who voted for Trump are racist. They are sexist. They are Islamophobic. They are ignorant.
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The whole thrust of these “let’s learn about the yokels” articles is to imply that there are real Americans and there are coastal elites. Sorry, motherfuckers. We’re all Americans. And if I have to suffer under your stupid, you have to hear about our smarts.
Greetings, AmeriKa – yes, you’re stuck with me – i’m like the flu – it’ll work itself out – get plenty of bed rest, suck down lots of chickie-soup – turn off your mind – turn on your neighbor – turn away from reality & just suspend your mind for the next 4 years – you can have it all back in 2020, after I’ve trashed it all to hell & made off with all of the money!
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Thus concludes one of our shortest podcasts!
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And thus begins, one of the darkest, if not THE darkest chapter, in American history!
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Thugocracy – via tweets – has just come to town.
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And now, as Edward R. Murrow used to sign off his newscasts ——>
We’ll be marching in the streets With shit-kickers on our feet Men with no morals who’d crucify Jesus Are the men who spurn on us Sit in judgement of all that’s wrong They decide as their shotgun sings the song
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I tip my hat to trump institution Take a bow for his new prostitution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I’ll get on my knees and pray We don’t get tooled again
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The change threatened to come We feared it all along We’re now tossed out into the cold And the world looks just insane And history is forever changed Their banne rs to be flown in the next war
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I’ll tip my hat to the new restitution Take a bow for the new destitution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I’ll get on my knees and pray We don’t get tooled again, no, no
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I’ll place all I care about aside If somehow we’re left half alive I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky Cause I know that those hypnotized never lie Or, would they?
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Yeaah!
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There’s nothing in the streets That looks any different to me But the slogans have all been replaced And the parting on the left Is now parting on the right Them angry white guys grown stronger overnight
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I’ll tip my hat to the new rendition Take a bow as a sign of contrition Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I’ll get on my knees and pray We don’t get tooled again Don’t get tooled again, no no
Yes, all of those electoral college electors (all 538 of them) — will be gathering at their various respective state capitols to cast their votes for EITHER Hillary Clinton Or Donald Trump.
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Now, ostensibly, The Drumpf walked away with 306 electoral votes on November 8th and Hillary Clinton came away with 232.
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Normally, the 306 Drumpf electors, being nominally pledged to Drumpf, would simply cast their ballots for him and at the end of the day he’d have 306 electoral votes and proceed on to the Inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017 and thence to the White House. Simply enough, right?
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Well, there’s a “teeny-weeny” problem in this election cycle. It seems that this nation’s arch-nemesis, RUSSIA, deliberately acted to insert itself into our 2016 U.S. presidential election by hacking into the email systems of the RNC – (Republican National Committee), The DNC – (The Democratic National Committee) – AND – the Clinton Campaign.
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Well, guess what, it seems that good ol’ boy, Vlad, Vladimir Putin, personally directed the overall dissemination of all of the electronically “purloined” digital information (emails). The info found its way to Wiki-Leaks for public distribution as well as to any and all journalists who — alerted of this available info — merely had to but request said info and it was provided to them, lock, stock + barrel.
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Now, here’s the “rub”. The only “dirt” thrown around by the Russian Hack Operation was information on EITHER the Democratic National Committee or on Hillary Clinton or her campaign. The Russians did not dish any “dirt” on the RNC.
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To take it one step further, BOTH the CIA + the FBI have now concluded that Vladimir Putin directed these efforts with the express purpose of helping Donald Trump become the next U.S. president and NOT Hillary Clinton.
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The last month of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign – (October) – was nothing more than an avalanche of either negative press coverage of emails from Hillary Clinton that reflected poorly on her or emails from the Denocratic National Committee that showed the Democratic presidential candidate in a bad light.
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This was no small “ripple” in a big pond; rather, this was a tidal wave headed straight for the beach. Putin, in effect, was directing his ire at Hillary Clinton personally for her comments made during the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections wherein she characterized that voting as being “rigged”. Such comments stung Putin at the time and so now he was turning the tables. They stung Putin at the time because several Russian satellite states had already broken away from Mother Russia – (Georgia + Ukraine). In addition, the 2011 Arab Spring that took place in Cairo, Egypt toppled the Egyptian strong man, Hosni Mubarak. Putin was feeling very vulnerable during this time as another fellow “strong man”.
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So, the question is, for these individual electors, when they assemble throughout the country on Monday, Dec. 19th, is this really the time to “rubber stamp” a candidate with the 306 electoral votes, just because he emerged on the night of November 8th with 306 electoral votes.
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Or, is there something spectacularly different about this particular gathering of the Electoral College. Could it be that the unprecedented scope in size and the sheer brazen quality of Putin’s Russian head-on hack into the very thick of the U.S. Presidential election leaves little or no doubt that, in its absence, Donald Trump would not have put up the numbers he put up on November 8th. That one of these campaigns, the Drumpf campaign, got a sizeable and profound “boost” from a foreign power, an arch-enemy, that most assuredly sealed the victory for the Republicans and which threw a huge monkey wrench into the Democratic candidate’s campaign that any cold-blooded, calculating analyst could only conclude that Hillary and her supporters got so totally ambushed that the very dynamics of an already extremely “fluid” campaign was jerked ferociously away from her side and back to the side that Putin/Russia was, in fact, helping, the Drumpf/Trump campaign.
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Can an “elector” simply overlook this “over-the-top” undue foreign influence and just “go through the motions” and rubber stamp the one side that was the direct beneficiary of a political robbery.
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Left unaddressed, this hack will permanently color the integrity of this election.
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The only option here is to recognize the obvious —- that, by any standard, the sheer size and scope of the orchestrated hack was so pervasive and extensive that — given the very closeness of the election in the swing states affected —- no sane person could come away with any other interpretation of these events but that Drump was literally “given” the election.
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Putin was the ultimate arbitor and the electors merely his “rubber-stamp” apparatchiks.
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This truly is a profile in courage scenario. It also plays straight into the very premise that is behind the construct of the Electoral College. This construct is not an inanimate machine or device. It is a construct of flesh and blood made up of thinking, feeling sentient beings who are faced with an extraordinary deviation from past presidential elections.
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Time to step up and do what is really right and not what is safe or familiar!
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