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Donald Trump's ties to the Russian mafia -- and his ability to launder money for them via various properties -- goes back at least 35 years, according to the investigative author of a new book.

What would it take for everyone’s life to matter as much as Jamal Khashoggi’s?

I ask this question over at the edge of the news, looking for a doorway into the human conscience.

Consider:

“The U.S. sold a total of $55.6 billion of weapons worldwide in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 — up 33 percent from the previous fiscal year, and a near record. In 2017, the U.S. cleared some $18 billion in new Saudi arms deals.”

This is from CBS News Moneywatch two weeks ago. No big deal, just a look at the U.S. weapons biz, which has been thrust into the national spotlight recently.

It’s time the world at long last learns the truth—-one way or the other—-about Stormy Daniels vs. Donald Trump. 

A single intimate drawing of the nation’s “First Member” could end it all.

This bitter controversy has spread all the way through the court system to Stephen Colbert ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRhcYTidHik ) , and has become an international embarrassment to our Puritan nation.

Ms. Daniels claims she had a brief but intimate affair with Trump just after his youngest son was born to his current third wife, the First Lady.   

In her new memoir Full Disclosure, Stormy describes the First Member as “smaller than average” with a “huge mushroom head…like a toadstool.”  

“I lay there,” she writes, “annoyed that I was getting f***ed by a guy with Yeti pubes and a d**k like the mushroom character in Mario Kart.”

Stormy claims their sexual encounter was, to put it politely, brief and unsatisfying.  

Trump says it never happened. 

– Jamal Khashoggi’s column lede, Washington Post, September 11, 2018

This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.
 

he integrity of the US judicial system is actively, albeit quietly, in play. A sitting federal judge, or more likely a panel of sitting federal judges, will be required in the near future to render an assessment of the honesty, integrity, and fitness of a Supreme Court justice to retain his lifetime appointment. The process and the result of the federal judges’ decision will, together, render a judgment as to the integrity of not just one Supreme Court justice but the federal courts as a national institution.

Originally published at the Nation Magazine:  https://www.thenation.com/article/democratic-autopsy-one-year-later/

America has never been as divided as it is today - except, perhaps, for that little kerfuffle called the Civil War and maybe that hawks-versus- doves dustup over the Vietnam War. Conflict makes for good drama - but it just may be that it makes for even better comedy. The whole Red State versus Blue State clash now dividing the USA between conservatives and liberals (and beyond), pro- and anti-Trumpers, etc., has been finding its way into our comedies, like sitcoms such as the Murphy Brown reboot and Roseanne-cum-The Connors. On the big screen, The Oath is a left-versus-right laugh riot.

Getting to the bottom of the Jamal Khashoggi disappearance is a bit like peeling an onion. It is known that Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul on October 2nd to get a document that would enable him to marry a Turkish woman. It is also known, from surveillance cameras situated outside the building, that he never came out walking the same way he entered. The presumption is that he was either killed inside or abducted, though the abduction theory would have to be based on a Consulate vehicle leaving the building with him presumably concealed inside, something that has not been confirmed by the Turks. If he was killed inside the building and dismembered, as seems likely, he could have had his body parts removed in the suitcases carried by the alleged fifteen official Saudis who had arrived that morning by private jet and left that afternoon the same way. The supposition is that the fifteen men, which may have included some members of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s bodyguard as well as a physician skilled in autopsies who was carrying a bone saw, constituted the execution party for Khashoggi.

“Itis the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship…Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” -- Hermann Goering,head of the Nazi army’s equivalent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Head of the Luftwaffe (April 18, 1946).

"Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press-- in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of LIBERAL excess during the past years." -- Adolf Hitler