201 Comments
Jul 15, 2023·edited Jul 15, 2023

"The fact that both Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have testified before the grand jury investigation 1/6/21 suggests to me that:" Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have testified before the grand jury investigation !

I'll start drawing conclusions when we find out what - exactly - questions were asked and how they responded.

Otherwise, subpoenaing them in to testify seems like a perfectly reasonable step in the investigation, while their compliance - willing or not - suggests to me that they've yet to take leave of their damn common sense!

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"Sexy Baby Girl" Ivanka FINALLY realized daddy DOES NOT CARE about her. She and her equally-criminal hubby aren't merely "flipping," they are SPINNING for lenient prison sentences!

I think Ivanka at least SHOULD be attacked with "kid's gloves" as she has always been a sexual object to her daddy since her birth; she never stood a chance in the real world.

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Daniel: Much as I appreciate the thought, really don't think this girl gives a r@t'$ @$$ for introspection, self-awareness or dealing with any other reality than what's in it for her. If she needed to throw Daddy or Jared under the bus to get more Saudi money, she'd have not a second thought. Am I being biased? Guess so. We all have our failings.

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A. There’s no reason to “attack” Ivanka

B. trump being the father he probably was, it’s possible she was using him as he used her and she feels no fidelity or loyalty to him either.

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I had a lovely father who was so unlike Trump I cannot imagine what it must have been like being raised by that jerk. I am uncharacteristically at a loss for words right now.

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Perhaps a discussion of tRump’s early childhood is in order.

Have members of this community watch this documentary?

https://www.pbs.org/video/the-choice-2020-trump-vs-biden-l0dutq/

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trump’s childhood was thoroughly examined by Mary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough. There’s no mystery about the man left to explain.. So many with business, political and television exposure to him have known what trump is for years and were it not for the latter he would never been nominated, let alone elected. The thing that’s puzzling is why we keep talking about him like he’s just another selfish bastard and not the sociopath he truly is. He’s not the issue. Citizens United and billionaires who bought trump, Congress, and the Supreme Court is where the problem lies. F**k trump.

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An interesting take by Glenn Kirchner you may all enjoy:

- WHAT ARE THE ODDS HE TOLD THE TRUTH?:

https://youtu.be/gxBNGc_RDJI

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Jul 16, 2023·edited Jul 16, 2023

Something I just came across that >everyone< should spend the few minutes with, that makes crystal clear what ol' Tweety and his defense would attempt to controvert and obfuscate. Since I've personally had official training on the handling of official documents, I can tell you with complete confidence that this info is absolutely correct:

- DON'T GET CONFUSED ABOUT THE [OL' TWEETY] INDICTMENTS:

https://youtu.be/5iIDLQspAt0

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Ivanka only talks with her yes, and Jared is a first-generation, analog Zombie up for a lube-job.

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I don’t read anything into that except that Jack Smith is leaving no stone unturned. The Kushners were major players in the Trump Administration and in the Trump Organization.

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Mueller was a useless coward. Garland was as well. Jack Smith SEEMS to be the gung-ho, machoman America DESPERATELY needs to "LOCK UP" "The Trump Crime Family."

(As far as I know, Hunter has some low-level drug offenses and daddy Joe is only guilty of the crimes EVERY president since Willy Clinton committed.)

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You’re a real absolutist aren’t you. Do you have any idea what shape the DOJ was in after 4 years of tFg and all his nasty appointees and actings? It’s real easy to throw stones from out here but walking in another’s shoes is difficult. AG Garland should have been a Supreme Court justice but I’m keeping my opinion about him until his term is over or he’s replaced. It’s bad enough that republicans tear the DOJ down. We don’t need to add to the pile.

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Jared Kushner was key in pulling top secret documents from the archives. I think he is a corrupt, squirmy little liar like his father, and I doubt he will be brought to justice. He should have been more than a witness by this point—he should be an indicted defendant.

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So for now he is an unindicted do-conspirator.

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The average salary fir a scriptwriter in Los Angeles is $62,789, with a range from $38,000 to $106,000. A single person must make more than $76,000 to "live comfortably" in Los Angeles.

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Paying actors and writers less than a livable wage is an example of what is being gone in all sectors accross the country. Private big business profit from a low wage and socialize the cost onto taxpayers. Our government has been a defender of big business. The reason they support big business is because our elected officials get money for their campaigns from them. If we took the money out of politics we could change the system to adjust wages upwards.

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It just likely means “I don’t recall” is being said thousands of times.

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founding

Trump as President again is a nightmare. But as someone more intelligent than I noted, the alt right is so strong now that Trump is the martyr and not necessary to growing its power. The movement to authoritarianism is world-wide. It is important to understand the Fascist and authoritarian playbook to understand what is happening. It has stayed relatively the same since Mussolni, Hitler and Stalin.

I found Madeleine Albrights: Fascism: A Warning (2018) Tim Synder's (Yale Historian) short, crisp book on (https://www.amazon.ca/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century/dp/0804190119) to be extremely helpful in knowing what to look for and what my role should be..

Now reading Anne Appelbaum's Twilight of Democracy (https://www.amazon.ca/Twilight-Democracy-Seductive-Lure-Authoritarianism/dp/0771005873/ref=asc_df_0771005873/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=459574977763&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1353049150135924436&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9000665&hvtargid=pla-1362771314310&psc=1 )

Required Reading...All three!

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I have read them. Our world is undergoing fundamental changes and I won’t pretend I have a handle on it .Trump ,US politics, and even global rise of authoritarianism are part of it as epiphenomena. The public is so uninformed and increasingly misinformed, and are scientifically malleable by forces of wealth and technology, on a scale never before seen through social, and Legacy media. Acceleration of Knowledge and technological change are unprecedented. Ditto climate change. Government and judiciary and educational institutions appear on the whole increasingly sclerotic and backward looking. Almost frozen in time. I will keep working to make a difference . what I am trying to say is we the global we have problems that run deeper than politics, although that is the most visible manifestation of the iceberg. Musing out loud.

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The changes that are happening, I suggest, are neither fundamental, nor absolute. The events of the present are more like a birth, a disruption of a "reality context" wherein the set of assumptions about the world (including ourselves) built to frame events grows systematically out of order such that it's difficult to describe and agree about what is going on. Through a long evolution of the development of popular governance and basic human rights, immortalized by Galileo's telling the church patriarchy (in change of Reality, and be damned if you don't) that our solar system was heliocentric, not geocentric (sun centered, not Earth centered); Galileo was jailed and threatened with condemnation by the Inquisition for contradicting the teachings of the church. Of course, Galileo was naïvely concerned with factual truth, while the church was concerned that public order would be affected if the masses was given grounds to question the words of the church about what explains why Nature is as it appears. The demise of colonialism and elite aristocratic rule in Europe became a victim of it's own success. The two World Wars were industrial-age conflicts. I think it can be argued by looking around that Old World nationalism and the industrial creation of modern weapons, including Earth terminating nuclear weapons, spelled the end of a world of isolated, self-sufficient, geographically defended nations, or polities. World War II left in its wake a governable world order of extra-national states: nuclear weapons, climate change and international commerce escape the competence of national community governance. When the child's feet grow, we change her shoes not the world. So, the conditions of definable "community" under an Old World structure are unable to rationalize the present because the machine is not built to make sense of a public life on the basis of common trust and productive common understanding. For example, in the Old World, people thought they lived under the ordering conditions in USAmerican, Big Business and Big money mostly had to make their fortunes at home, not as absentee landlords as they increasing do now.

In veritable nation isolation, Congress made the laws for governance and the President executed them. Now that old nations have become (in theory if not yet in reality) states in a larger planetary community, the governing power of Congress has become severely reduced because the President, whose constituted authority, has a quasi-legislative role in the emerging global community because he/she's the unique representative of the USA vis a vis other nations of the national community. In fact, it should be pointed out that citizenship and our scope of opportunity and moral responsibility for the environment has also escaped the narrow confines of the old isolated national scheme. So, change is like birth and institutional adaptation tied to our contextual frames of understanding and intentional action will experience growing pains. Where is the big surprise and the need for magical (or divine) intervention to reduce my stress level. The Big News is historical change is not "all about me."

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founding

Thanks for your interesting reply. You aptly put the political in the broader social and economic context, It is worrisome that journalists are not looking at this bigger picture as a whole. Vert worrisome.

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It’s very insightful that your mention journalism. The 4th estate seems to have lost its bearings and joined the partisan crowd. The 24 hour news, sensationalism and pandering to a particular POV has rendered most journalism into an echo chamber. We need more objective reporting and that needs to be restored in the mainstream press. Unfortunately, in a capitalist economy, the current form gets more eyeballs and therefore makes more money. And its money that matters.

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we were better off with Fairness Doctrine. So we need a court and a Congress that acts so that money is not the only thing that drives media. Supporting capitalsim does not imply supporting crazy capitalism. Preaching to the choir I imagine.

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Just tired of all things Trump. Youngkin is my big concern if he gets traction. Reading the Big Myth now by Oreskes. The role of business in propagandizing the public--- I had no idea the extent of it. NELA, NAM , etc. Hell, growing up I just thought it was Readers Digest not business mainlining propaganda into the American psyche. Reading this book reinforces how much business has always dominated the shape of all things in America and how hard the fight has been to win any social and economic justice. We The Corporation is also excellent to understand how the SC got to Citizens United. But it's really about America and the economic interests, played out before SCOTUS, that formed what we have today

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founding

I will read the Big Myth. I started on Dark Money but good not bear to finish it.. need to go back to it.

Ever hear about Smedley D Butler, a senior Army officer who was approached by Dupont and Wall Street to mount a coup against FDR just after WW1.

Smedley was sympathetic to demands made by disgruntled war vets so corporate America thought he would be an excellent candidate to lead the insurrection and get rid of FDR. Remington promised arms.

A friend was going to write a book on it...the records were missing in the National Archives.

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I have. Yeah a big archives fire right here in St Louis, the Broken Heart of America. Go to mopag.net in a week to see our next guest.

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Thank you for the reading list. I'll check the library and my local and largest bookstore in the country first. I might develop a deadly case of hives if I order from JB's outfit.

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I was surprised and delighted to learn that a high school that I support in Hilo Hawaii was asking for donations through Donors Choose to purchase a set of On Tyranny, to accompany their reading of Maus. Thankfully the intelligent analysis of Tim Snyder is spreading.

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founding

It was excelllent in content and brilliant in style. Great news that a HS has discovered it,

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The left owns the fascism title now. Constant gaslighting (lying,) control of speech, censorship and a president puppet. Wasting money on solar and wind. Locking people in their houses, spying. It is hard to believe how blind they are. College students in lock step with government is your first clue something is wrong.

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Tangled Web? Nothing more need be said.

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It means that they're still sweet-talking their way through grifting, having learned from the master.

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Dear Robert - I totally love listening to you and Heather on Saturdays, and I agree that it was very powerful and inspiring to read your poignant story about the struggles you faced as a short person growing up. I can see so clearly how it has shaped your kind and loving heart to feel for the "underdogs" in society and to want to help and protect them. I have a different but similar story - I grew up with severe eczema during my whole childhood and really into my 40's. I was spurned as a child because of it - I remember at summer camp when I was about 8 years old, we were forming a circle and joining hands, but no one wanted to hold my hand. I remember being up at the blackboard in math class in eighth grade working on a math problem. My teacher looked at my hands, and sent me to the nurse's office. My eczema was so bad that I remember sitting at the kitchen table every night, soaking my hands in warm water and epsom salts, after which my dad would apply cream and wrap my hands in gauze so I would not scratch during my sleep and wake up to bloody hands. Oh, my, brings tears to my eyes even now. But...what those things do is help you identify with the "other," with the poor, with the marginalized. So, out of adversity comes something good. God bless you.

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We have no idea what it means until we know what they said. History would dictate that they are trying to weaponize incompetence for their own benefit and in such a way to avoid ire from the ex-president.

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Is "weaponize incompetence" not an oxymoron? I do like it, though, let me add. But, the sense of weaponize suggests it's something one does to herself, and it's hard to see how it could be done other than deliberately and consciously, or done in the third-person looking into a cracked bathroom mirror. Of course, if one is appropriately bent, anything goes.

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🤔 “weaponize” triggers my thoughts of offense, even when used defensively. Please say more about how “weaponize” suggests something one does to [pronoun]self 🙏🏽

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A house divided against itself cannot stand. -- Abraham Lincoln

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Maybe the house divided against itself that cannot stand, but it would do well to sit down, take a deep breath, and negotiate a reunification lest it will fall into rubble.

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Biden will unite us.

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I'm down for that. Bring it on!

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This quotation predates Lincoln by a bunch of years.

Mark 3:25 (KJV): And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.

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OMG what was that? A hyper-extended metaphor? Kinda scary! Especially the ending with a snotty runny nose. Yikes. Ain't no vitamins gonna save us from this deadly trumpian flesh-eating virus.

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dnkarr--You were right, the best place for that thought is in the trash.

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dnkarr--I apologize, I got up this AM and a migraine was dominating my thought process. I hate those things, I don't really remember writing that mess.

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dnkarr--The main question surrounding Trump's guilt is did he realize he lost the 2020 election while maintaining the election was stolen. The past is the key to the man's guilt. Trump lies about everything and that will be his undoing. If Donnie Boy takes a position on anything and runs with it he's promoting a lie. By Trump saying the election was stolen, he really means, "I know I lost but what I tell my base will be the "Big lie." The man's position holds his admission. He lies about everything. Put him on the stand under oath and let's see if Trump understands the meaning of "Purgery." If he doesn't he'll have 5 years to think about it.

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The proof of the pudding is what they say in court.

They have to be targets, too as they aided and abetted and comforted insurrectionists.

They also were supposed to have been government employees while they reaped $billions, received a loan from Qatar, deals with the Saudis, Oman. On Kushner's watch as the king of Trump's COVID initiative, maybe 500,000 died.....

What happened in the Trump Tower incident? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_meeting

Backchannel to the Russians? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/explainer-jared-kushners-attempted-back-channel-russia-treasonous-typical

Saudis? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/12/after-helping-princes-rise-trump-kushner-benefit-saudi-funds/

Was Trump negotiating for a Trump Havana? A Trump Moscow? A trump Abu Dhabi? All while a candidate or as [resident?

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"The CIA concluded that Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist who was living in the United States, was assassinated on direct orders from Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), crown prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom dispatched a 15-man “death squad” to Istanbul, comprised of members of MbS’s own security detail, to make the hit. On Oct. 2, the assassins concocted a reason to lure Khashoggi into the consulate. There, they spent seven full minutes torturing him, slicing off his fingers and other body parts while he was still alive. Then they killed him and hacked up the remains with a bone saw."

What does Kushner know and when did he know it?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/us/politics/jamal-khashoggi-disappearance-kushner.html

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Taking the 5th.

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I loved Heather-on-caffeine! A pleasure to hear more of her opinions with less wholesale deference to her mentor. Go Heather!

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Jul 16, 2023Liked by Heather Lofthouse

An additional comment about today’s coffee klatch:

Heather you were great! You were enthusiastic and direct and less cautious in the conversation. You were confident and spontaneous in a way that really made the flow of conversation more natural, nuanced and fun. I felt you really owned your seat. I agree with RR when he extemporaneously proclaimed “ I like caffeinated Heather!

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Jul 16, 2023Liked by Heather Lofthouse

Heather, keep drinking the full caf! You were really lively today. I loved it!

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We have no idea about what was said. I just hope Jack Smith gets trump to trial very very soon.

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Maybe not so soon as to possibly derail his nomination, however

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