At the center of the inquiry are donations made to political events and Trump’s re-election campaign by certain private citizens, including employees of massage parlors linked to Li “Cindy” Yang, a Chinese immigrant and GOP donor who’d been promoting herself as someone with access to the president’s social orbit.
Authorities are trying to find out if any of the money was provided by Chinese nationals or entities of the Chinese government and channeled illegally to the Trump campaign. The massage-parlor connection would be far-fetched anywhere except Florida.
Yang drew widespread attention in March after a Chinese national talked her way past Mar-a-Lago security while carrying two passports, four cell phones and a thumb drive containing malware. Authorities said the woman, who was arrested, claimed to be trying to attend an event promoted on Yang’s website.
The Justice Department is especially interested in a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser that Trump attended on March 3, 2018. The invitation capped campaign contributions at $5,400, but the cost of getting a signed photo with the president was $50,000.
Yang, who wanted a picture of herself beside Trump, reached out to quite a few people she knew. One of those who wrote a $5,400 check was a person exquisitely named Bingbing Peranio, a former receptionist at one of Yang’s massage parlors.
Massage parlor receptionists typically don’t make enough money to have a spare $5,400 lying around. And Peranio wasn’t the only current or past employee of Yang’s spa chain to give that amount to Trump Victory; some even wrote a second $5,400 check to the president’s re-election campaign.
One can understand why prosecutors became curious….
[…]
No writer of spy novels could ever dream up a plot in which Chinese agents funneled money through strip-mall massage parlors to penetrate the Winter White House. If that turns out to be true, another question of national urgency looms on the horizon:
In an interview Friday with the British tabloid The Sun, Trump said Boris Johnson — the divisive populist and ex-foreign secretary who is favorite to replace May — would make an “excellent” prime minister.
“I think Boris would do a very good job. I think he would be excellent,” Trump said.
The president also referred to the American-born Duchess of Sussex as “nasty” over comments she made in 2016 threatening to move to Canada if Trump won the White House.
But he wished her well in her new life as a princess. “I am sure she will do excellently,” he added.
The comments threatened to overshadow the build up to Trump’s long-awaited state visit.
Trump is widely disliked in the U.K. He has a positive opinion rating of only 21 percent, according to YouGov, compared to 72 percent for former President Barack Obama.
But he told The Sun Friday that “I don’t imagine any U.S. president was ever closer to your great land.”
“Now I think I am really — I hope — I am really loved in the U.K.,” he added. “I certainly love the U.K.”
I’m trying to find my copies of Mustang Sally by Tiny Tim and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They are somewhat different interpretations.
The Tabs give us a police-like serious warning about speeding. But Tiny Tim’s rendition treats Mustang Sally as almost frivolous.
This has been a humor test by the United States Humor Defense Board. It is only a test. Had it been actual humor, you would have been given instructions regarding where to go. And, of course, just how fast.
To the tune of Give Ireland Back to the Irish
Make pence our very next prezzie,
Oh no, don’ make him wait four more years !
Make pence our very next prezzie,
Avoid alla his pencie tears.
rip bootlicks, you are tremenjuss;
On russkie mattresses you pee.
So, tell us what’r you doing,
Getting beat by Buttijee ?
Tell me how would you like it, if on your way to vote,
You were swamped by Hickenloopers,
Would you stand there, take it,
Bash ’em with terror-iffs ?
Alexandra Petri once more waxing forth with ancient epic poetry in her “William Barr: Death is inevitable, legacies are meaningless”:
“Everyone dies and I am not, you know, I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that you know, immortality comes by, you know, having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know?”
I am a meat puppet wrapped for a brief time around a ghost, dragged from one point to another by forces beyond my control.
Afterward? I do not care what Homer says, that songs bring immortality. We are, when we are gone, only imperfectly recollected dust. One must not dwell on this.
Even before death, we die many times, little unmarked farewells, things that will simply never be seen or done by us again, words that will never be linked with our names another time, though we do not notice their departing until after they are absent: reverence, duty, honor. Our bodies grow lighter and heavier than we were accustomed. Our names carry a different weight in the public mouth. They echo at a different angle. Imperceptibly we bid farewell to all that we are. Our faces become unrecognizable. The words we speak lose their meaning. We become our own ghosts.
The body is replaced many times before it is entirely gone. By the final replacement, we have ceased to notice. The atoms we would miss have not been there for years. We are a walking vacancy in place of a person. At first the replacement is a replenishment, and then it becomes a sapping — of our strength, our beauty, our wisdom, everything we are. But there is no way to direct it not to happen. So it does not do to mark or measure these changes. You are, and then you cease to satisfy, and then you die. There is no room for regret. Let the dead past bury its dead.
Ultimately, does anything we say or do echo even for a moment? Is any legacy more than a collection of imperfect sketches of an object already fled too far to grasp? Memory is an act that must take place in time, but the living are too greedy to remember. There is no legacy. There can be no legacy.
I have been to the desert. I have seen the ruin that is all that remains of the works of men.
The wrack is coming for us. The great oblivion encroaches daily. It will sweep away all our petty fortifications against time and make mockery of all our noblest works. We are dust. Only the cockroaches will remain. And to them our memorials will be illegible.
They will remember nothing of all these monuments of meat.
That is why I have been proud to serve as Donald Trump’s attorney general.
Unlikely Friendships Dept.
Bob Dylan and Tiny Tim were and remained very close friends stemming from their time bumming around The Village in the early 60’s. Dylan wrote about it in his book CHRONICLES. Said Tim was one of the realist cats he’d ever met.
Jamie, I love The Commitments. I probably watch it every couple of years. I understand that the singer had a bit of a career singing in the UK. I think he’s got a great voice.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Boot licker – I’d say he’s licking something else
And really — the media’s failure to point out SFB’s monumental hypocrisy for attacking Biden on black justice issues The man who took out a full page ad in NY newspapers saying the Central Park five should be kept in jail even after they had been exonerated. I think a major part of the problem with Trump being removed is the media. They still make everything a horse race — it’s not and they need to get over themselves before it is too late.
The cover for the June 3, 2019, issue, by Barry Blitt, portrays three men who have been enormously helpful to President Trump: Lindsey Graham, William Barr, and Mitch McConnell. “Assembling an image with the President’s enablers presented a problem: Who to include, who to leave out?” Blitt said. “I barely had enough room for the President himself. In any case, I expect there will be other opportunities to draw Devin Nunes, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Sean Hannity, etc., etc., etc.”
Pat, I am so pleased that you have featured that cover. When my copy of the mag arrived on Tuesday I jumped up and down with joy. I’m considering having it framed then carrying it to Lindsey’s local office. Perhaps, wishful thinking, I can get the building manager to let me hang it in the main entrance way.
excerpt from vanity fair review of wolff’s new book:
[…]
“I can’t get the asshole off the phone,” Rupert Murdoch once said of Trump, “holding out the phone as the president’s voice rambled into the air,” according to Wolff. The same section of the book details tensions between Rupert and James Murdoch, resulting from the latter’s disgust over the Fox News prime-time lineup, namely Sean Hannity. “Father and son had screaming fights over Hannity and Trump,” Wolff writes in Siege, a copy of which I got my hands on a few days ago. “The Murdoch family had become collaborators, declared the younger Murdoch. The world would remember. The future of their company was at stake.” Wolff also writes, of Hannity, that the 9 P.M. anchor’s “cheerleading had begun to wear thin, and Trump started to turn on him. . . . For all of Hannity’s flattery, for all of his zealous commitment to the president, Trump, in almost equal proportion, had become disdainful of him. This was partly standard practice. Sooner or later, Trump felt contempt for anyone who showed him too much devotion.” (A spokesman for Rupert Murdoch didn’t immediately have a comment Wednesday morning. Through a spokeswoman, James Murdoch declined to comment. Hannity, through a spokeswoman, reiterated a previous statement about his interactions with Trump: “Nobody has ever gotten my relationship with Donald Trump right, ever.”)
How Rupert was awarded American citizenship is beyond me—his and his family’s agendas were so contrary to our values that it was mis- if not malfeasance by the responsible immigration officials. Of course, our friends in Australia couldn’t have been happier.
carl Hiaasen: If a woman named ‘Bingbing’ isn’t enough for movie deal, what is? | Opinion
Those pesky federal prosecutors are it again, buzzing around the Trump presidency like flies on a steaming cowpie.
Last week, subpoenas were sent to Trump Victory, a Republican fundraising committee, and Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s private waterfront club in Palm Beach.
At the center of the inquiry are donations made to political events and Trump’s re-election campaign by certain private citizens, including employees of massage parlors linked to Li “Cindy” Yang, a Chinese immigrant and GOP donor who’d been promoting herself as someone with access to the president’s social orbit.
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article231054458.html#storylink=cpy
Authorities are trying to find out if any of the money was provided by Chinese nationals or entities of the Chinese government and channeled illegally to the Trump campaign. The massage-parlor connection would be far-fetched anywhere except Florida.
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article231054458.html#storylink=cpy
The Herald broke the story that Yang once owned the Jupiter “day spa” where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was secretly videotaped allegedly having sex with prostitutes. He denies the charges.
Yang drew widespread attention in March after a Chinese national talked her way past Mar-a-Lago security while carrying two passports, four cell phones and a thumb drive containing malware. Authorities said the woman, who was arrested, claimed to be trying to attend an event promoted on Yang’s website.
The Justice Department is especially interested in a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser that Trump attended on March 3, 2018. The invitation capped campaign contributions at $5,400, but the cost of getting a signed photo with the president was $50,000.
Yang, who wanted a picture of herself beside Trump, reached out to quite a few people she knew. One of those who wrote a $5,400 check was a person exquisitely named Bingbing Peranio, a former receptionist at one of Yang’s massage parlors.
Massage parlor receptionists typically don’t make enough money to have a spare $5,400 lying around. And Peranio wasn’t the only current or past employee of Yang’s spa chain to give that amount to Trump Victory; some even wrote a second $5,400 check to the president’s re-election campaign.
One can understand why prosecutors became curious….
[…]
No writer of spy novels could ever dream up a plot in which Chinese agents funneled money through strip-mall massage parlors to penetrate the Winter White House. If that turns out to be true, another question of national urgency looms on the horizon:
Who will play Bingbing Peranio in the movie?
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article231054458.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article231054458.html#storylink=cpy
Bill recaps the top stories of the week, including Mueller’s public statement and Trump’s revealing Russia tweet.
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/brexit-referendum/trump-creates-diplomatic-headache-u-k-even-state-visit-n1008221
[…]
In an interview Friday with the British tabloid The Sun, Trump said Boris Johnson — the divisive populist and ex-foreign secretary who is favorite to replace May — would make an “excellent” prime minister.
“I think Boris would do a very good job. I think he would be excellent,” Trump said.
The president also referred to the American-born Duchess of Sussex as “nasty” over comments she made in 2016 threatening to move to Canada if Trump won the White House.
But he wished her well in her new life as a princess. “I am sure she will do excellently,” he added.
The comments threatened to overshadow the build up to Trump’s long-awaited state visit.
Trump is widely disliked in the U.K. He has a positive opinion rating of only 21 percent, according to YouGov, compared to 72 percent for former President Barack Obama.
But he told The Sun Friday that “I don’t imagine any U.S. president was ever closer to your great land.”
“Now I think I am really — I hope — I am really loved in the U.K.,” he added. “I certainly love the U.K.”
[continues]
Sorry for the technical ineptitude, but Sturg is right.
I’m trying to find my copies of Mustang Sally by Tiny Tim and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They are somewhat different interpretations.
The Tabs give us a police-like serious warning about speeding. But Tiny Tim’s rendition treats Mustang Sally as almost frivolous.
This has been a humor test by the United States Humor Defense Board. It is only a test. Had it been actual humor, you would have been given instructions regarding where to go. And, of course, just how fast.
X-R, couldn’t find tiny singing mustang either but did find this:
also found this rendition by a choir, just not the saintly one
Mustang Sally – St. Edmundsbury Male Voice Choir
To the tune of Give Ireland Back to the Irish
Make pence our very next prezzie,
Oh no, don’ make him wait four more years !
Make pence our very next prezzie,
Avoid alla his pencie tears.
rip bootlicks, you are tremenjuss;
On russkie mattresses you pee.
So, tell us what’r you doing,
Getting beat by Buttijee ?
Tell me how would you like it, if on your way to vote,
You were swamped by Hickenloopers,
Would you stand there, take it,
Bash ’em with terror-iffs ?
Make pence our very next prezzie . . . .
For more silly inconsequential nonsense tune in to trump’s tweets.
XR, you recall how Gerald Ford became Prez. Do we want to risk that fate for Ms P?
Alexandra Petri once more waxing forth with ancient epic poetry in her “William Barr: Death is inevitable, legacies are meaningless”:
“Everyone dies and I am not, you know, I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that you know, immortality comes by, you know, having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know?”
— William P. Barr, asked about his legacy as attorney general
Everyone dies. This much is known.
I am a meat puppet wrapped for a brief time around a ghost, dragged from one point to another by forces beyond my control.
Afterward? I do not care what Homer says, that songs bring immortality. We are, when we are gone, only imperfectly recollected dust. One must not dwell on this.
Even before death, we die many times, little unmarked farewells, things that will simply never be seen or done by us again, words that will never be linked with our names another time, though we do not notice their departing until after they are absent: reverence, duty, honor. Our bodies grow lighter and heavier than we were accustomed. Our names carry a different weight in the public mouth. They echo at a different angle. Imperceptibly we bid farewell to all that we are. Our faces become unrecognizable. The words we speak lose their meaning. We become our own ghosts.
The body is replaced many times before it is entirely gone. By the final replacement, we have ceased to notice. The atoms we would miss have not been there for years. We are a walking vacancy in place of a person. At first the replacement is a replenishment, and then it becomes a sapping — of our strength, our beauty, our wisdom, everything we are. But there is no way to direct it not to happen. So it does not do to mark or measure these changes. You are, and then you cease to satisfy, and then you die. There is no room for regret. Let the dead past bury its dead.
Ultimately, does anything we say or do echo even for a moment? Is any legacy more than a collection of imperfect sketches of an object already fled too far to grasp? Memory is an act that must take place in time, but the living are too greedy to remember. There is no legacy. There can be no legacy.
I have been to the desert. I have seen the ruin that is all that remains of the works of men.
The wrack is coming for us. The great oblivion encroaches daily. It will sweep away all our petty fortifications against time and make mockery of all our noblest works. We are dust. Only the cockroaches will remain. And to them our memorials will be illegible.
They will remember nothing of all these monuments of meat.
That is why I have been proud to serve as Donald Trump’s attorney general.
Unlikely Friendships Dept.
Bob Dylan and Tiny Tim were and remained very close friends stemming from their time bumming around The Village in the early 60’s. Dylan wrote about it in his book CHRONICLES. Said Tim was one of the realist cats he’d ever met.
Speaking of “meat puppets”, don’t look back, they are gaining on us.
I still watch “The Commitments” every once in a while
https://youtu.be/_25Hpf3EOyU
Jamie, I love The Commitments. I probably watch it every couple of years. I understand that the singer had a bit of a career singing in the UK. I think he’s got a great voice.
Well, Barr is no PBS although he may be an SFB bootlicker.
You’ll never view/hear a better rendition of Mozart Piano Concerto 21 K467
Boot licker – I’d say he’s licking something else
And really — the media’s failure to point out SFB’s monumental hypocrisy for attacking Biden on black justice issues The man who took out a full page ad in NY newspapers saying the Central Park five should be kept in jail even after they had been exonerated. I think a major part of the problem with Trump being removed is the media. They still make everything a horse race — it’s not and they need to get over themselves before it is too late.
Trumps’ epitaph
“he never thought…”
“The Shining,” by Barry Blitt.
Barry Blitt’s “The Shining”
By Françoise Mouly
The cover for the June 3, 2019, issue, by Barry Blitt, portrays three men who have been enormously helpful to President Trump: Lindsey Graham, William Barr, and Mitch McConnell. “Assembling an image with the President’s enablers presented a problem: Who to include, who to leave out?” Blitt said. “I barely had enough room for the President himself. In any case, I expect there will be other opportunities to draw Devin Nunes, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Sean Hannity, etc., etc., etc.”
Read John Cassidy, Margaret Talbot, and Susan B. Glasser for analysis of how the President’s men burnished his reputation.
Pat, I am so pleased that you have featured that cover. When my copy of the mag arrived on Tuesday I jumped up and down with joy. I’m considering having it framed then carrying it to Lindsey’s local office. Perhaps, wishful thinking, I can get the building manager to let me hang it in the main entrance way.
excerpt from vanity fair review of wolff’s new book:
[…]
“I can’t get the asshole off the phone,” Rupert Murdoch once said of Trump, “holding out the phone as the president’s voice rambled into the air,” according to Wolff. The same section of the book details tensions between Rupert and James Murdoch, resulting from the latter’s disgust over the Fox News prime-time lineup, namely Sean Hannity. “Father and son had screaming fights over Hannity and Trump,” Wolff writes in Siege, a copy of which I got my hands on a few days ago. “The Murdoch family had become collaborators, declared the younger Murdoch. The world would remember. The future of their company was at stake.” Wolff also writes, of Hannity, that the 9 P.M. anchor’s “cheerleading had begun to wear thin, and Trump started to turn on him. . . . For all of Hannity’s flattery, for all of his zealous commitment to the president, Trump, in almost equal proportion, had become disdainful of him. This was partly standard practice. Sooner or later, Trump felt contempt for anyone who showed him too much devotion.” (A spokesman for Rupert Murdoch didn’t immediately have a comment Wednesday morning. Through a spokeswoman, James Murdoch declined to comment. Hannity, through a spokeswoman, reiterated a previous statement about his interactions with Trump: “Nobody has ever gotten my relationship with Donald Trump right, ever.”)
[continues]
How Rupert was awarded American citizenship is beyond me—his and his family’s agendas were so contrary to our values that it was mis- if not malfeasance by the responsible immigration officials. Of course, our friends in Australia couldn’t have been happier.
I love Perry Mason – some of the original series is on Amazon — I have seen them a million times
Mr Flatus,
In re Mrs pence : We all hafta make sacrifices.
In re barr’s prediction of his death : I wish that damn antihero would quit gassing and get on with it.
Barr is the definition of why people think most lawyers stink
patd
speaking as a member of the lawyers antidefamation league
Some of my best friends are lawyers.
no, that wasn’t a response to kgc’s comment. just to current tribulations caused by the Trumpian times we’re in.
NEW THREAD