U.S. Politics

[chrisp65]

Trump is an absolute disgrace to the office.

Tweeting about trivia and nuclear war.

[MrDuck]

Relevant:

[peterms]

9 hours ago, mjmooney said:

JFK got taken out merely because his brother had upset the mafia. 

Not a risk for Trump, that one.

There's some interesting stories here about Trump and the mafia (previously posted, but the whole article is well worth a read).

Quote

...What Gatsby and Trump also have in common are gangsters. Gatsby’s fortune is secretly derived from his bootlegging partnership with Meyer Wolfsheim, a character based on the mobster Arnold Rothstein, who fixed the 1919 World Series. Trump’s business has been dependent almost from the start on real-life racketeers. There was Anthony ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, boss of the Genovese crime family, and Paul ‘Big Paulie’ Castellano, boss of the Gambino crime family, who owned the company that provided the ready-mix cement for Trump Tower, used in place of the usual steel girders. There was John Cody, the boss of Teamsters Local 282, who controlled the cement trucks and was an associate of the Gambino family. There was Daniel Sullivan, Trump’s labour ‘consultant’, who in partnership with the Philadelphia crime boss Nicodemos ‘Nicky’ Scarfo’s financier, sold Trump a property in Atlantic City that became his casino. There was Salvatore ‘Salvie’ Testa, ‘crown prince’ of the Philadelphia Mob, who sold Trump the site on which two construction firms owned by Scarfo built the Trump Plaza and Casino. There was Felix Sater, convicted money launderer for the Russian Mafia, Trump’s partner in building the Trump SoHo hotel through the Bayrock Group LLC, which by 2007 had more than $2 billion in Trump licensed projects and by 2014 was no more. There was Tevfik Arif, another Trump partner, Bayrock’s chairman, originally from Kazakhstan. Bayrock’s equity financing came from three Kazakh billionaires known as ‘the Trio’, who were reported to be engaged in racketeering, money laundering and other crimes. And so on.

There was no art to these deals. Trump’s relationships with the Mob weren’t just about the quality of cement. In his defence it was said that doing business with the Mob was inescapable in New York, but the truth is that there were prominent developers who crusaded against the sorts of arrangement that Trump routinely made. From beginning to end, whether Cosa Nostra or the Russian Mafia, Trump has been married to the Mob...

1

and here

Quote

...After graduating in 1968 from the University of Pennsylvania, a rich young man from the outer boroughs of New York City sought his fortune on the island of Manhattan. Within a few years Donald J. Trump had made friends with the city’s most notorious fixer, lawyer Roy Cohn, who had become famous as lead counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Among other things Cohn was now a mob consigliere, with clients including “Fat Tony” Salerno, boss of the Genovese crime family, the most powerful Mafia group in New York, and Paul Castellano, head of what was said to be the second largest family, the Gambinos.

This business connection proved useful when Trump began work on what would become Trump Tower, the 58-story high-rise where he still lives when he’s not at his Florida estate.

There was something a little peculiar about the construction of Trump Tower, and subsequent Trump projects in New York. Most skyscrapers are steel girder construction, and that was especially true in the 1980s, says John Cross of the American Iron & Steel Institute. Some use pre-cast concrete. Trump chose a costlier and in many ways riskier method: ready-mix concrete. Ready-mix has some advantages: it can speed up construction, and doesn’t require costly fireproofing. But it must be poured quickly or it will harden in the delivery truck drums, ruining them as well as creating costly problems with the building itself. That leaves developers vulnerable to the unions: the worksite gate is union controlled, so even a brief labor slowdown can turn into an expensive disaster.

Salerno, Castellano and other organized crime figures controlled the ready-mix business in New York, and everyone in construction at the time knew it. So did government investigators trying to break up the mob, urged on by major developers such as the LeFrak and Resnick families. Trump ended up not only using ready-mix concrete, but also paying what a federal indictment of Salerno later concluded were inflated prices for it – repeatedly – to S & A Concrete, a firm Salerno and Castellano owned through fronts, and possibly to other mob-controlled firms. As Barrett noted, by choosing to build with ready-mix concrete rather than other materials, Trump put himself “at the mercy of a legion of concrete racketeers.”

Salerno and Castellano and other mob families controlled both the concrete business and the unions involved in delivering and pouring it. The risks this created became clear from testimony later by Irving Fischer, the general contractor who built Trump Tower. Fischer said concrete union “goons” once stormed his offices, holding a knife to throat of his switchboard operator to drive home the seriousness of their demands, which included no-show jobs during construction of Trump Tower.

But with Cohn as his lawyer, Trump apparently had no reason to personally fear Salerno or Castellano—at least, not once he agreed to pay inflated concrete prices. What Trump appeared to receive in return was union peace. That meant the project would never face costly construction or delivery delays.

The indictment on which Salerno was convicted in 1988 and sent to prison, where he died, listed the nearly $8 million contract for concrete at Trump Plaza, an East Side high-rise apartment building, as one of the acts establishing that S &A was part of a racketeering enterprise. (While the concrete business was central to the case, the trial also proved extortion, narcotics, rigged union elections and murders by the Genovese and Gambino crime families in what Michael Chertoff, the chief prosecutor, called “the largest and most vicious criminal business in the history of the United States.'')...

5

 

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

38 minutes ago, peterms said:

Not a risk for Trump, that one.

There's some interesting stories here about Trump and the mafia (previously posted, but the whole article is well worth a read).

To be fair to Trump,  there was no way to build anything in New York in the 70's or 80's without paying off the Mafia.  They controlled the Concrete and the Unions for Builders.

So he paid OTT on the concrete and probably paid for no-shows also on the site and inflated garbage collection to boot once finished but If I was Trump I would have done exactly the same tbh,  it's good for business to stay alive.  From memory I am sure that even some Government buildings had to do the same thing at around the time.  Everyone had to pay the extra as there was only maybe 2 or 3 that would bid for the jobs with the winner pre-determined,  that's for concrete,  workers and garbage removal.  In the early 80's they (Mafia) had it all under their control.

 

 

 

[tonyh29]

13 hours ago, mjmooney said:

JFK got taken out merely because his brother had upset the mafia. 

Not sure that is true tbh  ..despite the conspiracy theories  it's 100% fact (ok lets say 99.9% to be safe)  that Oswald did it but I don't think it's ever been proven that Oswald had any Mafia connections , the only link to be uncovered was that Oswald’s uncle was a bookie for the New Orleans mafia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Straggler]

I was at the NFL game at Wembley yesterday.  The topic of taking a knee was discussed quite a bit on the train on the way down and I watched the players with some interest as the anthem started.  Cards on the table, I'm right behind the guys who are kneeling for the anthem.  Actually watching it happen gave me chills as a little bit of history played out in front of me.  The reason it gave me chills is I realised just how hard it is to do what they are doing.  The social convention of standing for the national anthem is stupidly hard to break.  I stood for the whole thing even though I could not give two hoots for the American flag and as the anthem went on I considered taking a knee or just plain sitting down myself.  However the power of the convention pretty much sucks you up onto your feet and holds you there like it has a physical grip on your body.  And I'm just little old me that no one there could give a single crap about if I sit, stand or boogy.  I have a huge amount of respect for Kaepernick being the first one to do what he did, it must have taken an amazing amount of courage.  The players that have followed him deserve huge credit too.

In related news it was not just the players that got involved. Rico Lavelle (I've never heard of him tbh) finished singing the national anthem at the Detroit Lions game on his knee (pictured below)

But I also want to point to one cheerleader who took a stand/knee.  It is one thing to be a player with your team mates support and vast wealth that goes with playing at the top of the game, it is quite another to do what Issa Rai did and do it from a position of comparative weakness and to be the only one on her team doing it.  I'm impressed.

 

 

[Brumerican]

6 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

Not sure that is true tbh  ..despite the conspiracy theories  it's 100% fact (ok lets say 99.9% to be safe)  that Oswald did it but I don't think it's ever been proven that Oswald had any Mafia connections , the only link to be uncovered was that Oswald’s uncle was a bookie for the New Orleans mafia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've read pretty much every Cosa Nostra book going and it's pretty much common knowledge in that world that the 5 families gave Florida Don Santo Trafficante the nod to off JFK. Oswald may have pulled the trigger but the hit had baked ziti all over it.

[mjmooney]

16 minutes ago, Brumerican said:

I've read pretty much every Cosa Nostra book going and it's pretty much common knowledge in that world that the 5 families gave Florida Don Santo Trafficante the nod to off JFK. Oswald may have pulled the trigger but the hit had baked ziti all over it.

Yep. The MANY Kennedy mob connections are well known and extensively documented. Basically, Sam Giancana rigged the 1960 election, and expected a quid pro quo in terms of going easy on the mob. He got the opposite, when RFK as attorney general went after organised crime in a big way (he would get his a few years later). Oswald was silenced by Ruby, who had numerous mob connections. Circumstantial evidence - but the point is there is so much of it that it becomes pretty overwhelming. This is not a conspiracy theory in the 'fake moon landing' sense - it's pretty much accepted fact in every way except the 'official' account. 

[TheAuthority]

15 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Yep. The MANY Kennedy mob connections are well known and extensively documented. Basically, Sam Giancana rigged the 1960 election, and expected a quid pro quo in terms of going easy on the mob. He got the opposite, when RFK as attorney general went after organised crime in a big way (he would get his a few years later). Oswald was silenced by Ruby, who had numerous mob connections. Circumstantial evidence - but the point is there is so much of it that it becomes pretty overwhelming. This is not a conspiracy theory in the 'fake moon landing' sense - it's pretty much accepted fact in every way except the 'official' account. 

Isn't it also proved impossible that Oswald could get off that number if shots in that time with the rifle he had? Ergo there had to be other shooters.

[Brumerican]

19 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Yep. The MANY Kennedy mob connections are well known and extensively documented. Basically, Sam Giancana rigged the 1960 election, and expected a quid pro quo in terms of going easy on the mob. He got the opposite, when RFK as attorney general went after organised crime in a big way (he would get his a few years later). Oswald was silenced by Ruby, who had numerous mob connections. Circumstantial evidence - but the point is there is so much of it that it becomes pretty overwhelming. This is not a conspiracy theory in the 'fake moon landing' sense - it's pretty much accepted fact in every way except the 'official' account. 

Oh absolutely. Ruby was running guns over to Cuba frequently and obviously Castro and Trafficante were good pals . Not to mention Ruby was in with the Chicago guys as well. 

Edited September 25, 2017 by Brumerican

[TheAuthority]

10 hours ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

Everyone had to pay the extra as there was only maybe 2 or 3 that would bid for the jobs with the winner pre-determined,  that's for concrete,  workers and garbage removal.  In the early 80's they (Mafia) had it all under their control.

 

 

 

I live in NYC now and I can say for certainty that the garbage removal is still 100% controlled by the certain "New Jersey types."

[tonyh29]

43 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Yep. The MANY Kennedy mob connections are well known and extensively documented. Basically, Sam Giancana rigged the 1960 election, and expected a quid pro quo in terms of going easy on the mob. He got the opposite, when RFK as attorney general went after organised crime in a big way (he would get his a few years later). Oswald was silenced by Ruby, who had numerous mob connections. Circumstantial evidence - but the point is there is so much of it that it becomes pretty overwhelming. This is not a conspiracy theory in the 'fake moon landing' sense - it's pretty much accepted fact in every way except the 'official' account. 

 

1 hour ago, Brumerican said:

I've read pretty much every Cosa Nostra book going and it's pretty much common knowledge in that world that the 5 families gave Florida Don Santo Trafficante the nod to off JFK. Oswald may have pulled the trigger but the hit had baked ziti all over it.

I agree about all the mob Connections wth the Kennedys and don’t doubt they may we’ll have wanted revenge , but the over whelming evidence on oswald doesn’t support anything other than an individual who wanted to kill Kennedy ( well tbf there is some suggestion he was aiming for Connelly and hit the wrong bloke , but even that gets debunked in the grand scheme of things )

the Ruby bit was more spontaneous fluke than any mafia plan to silence Oswald , Ruby’s movements that day really don’t bare out a planned  hit and had Oswald not asked for a shirt thus delaying him , Ruby would have been inside western union and missed the Oswald transfer 

 

 

(sorry OT , but it is a fascinating subject maybe for the conspiracy thread )

Edited September 25, 2017 by tonyh29

[Brumerican]

5 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

 

I agree about all the mob Connections wth the Kennedys and don’t doubt they may we’ll have wanted revenge , but the over whelming evidence on oswald doesn’t support anything other than an individual who wanted to kill Kennedy ( well tbf there is some suggestion he was aiming for Connelly and hit the wrong bloke , but even that gets debunked in the grand scheme of things )

the Ruby bit was more spontaneous fluke than any mafia plan to silence Oswald , Ruby’s movements that day really don’t bare out a planned  hit and had Oswald not asked for a shirt thus delaying him , Ruby would have been inside western union and missed the Oswald transfer 

 

 

(sorry OT , but it is a fascinating subject maybe for the conspiracy thread )

No chance on earth that was a spontaneous fluke. Ruby owed the mob . 

[tonyh29]

30 minutes ago, Brumerican said:

No chance on earth that was a spontaneous fluke. Ruby owed the mob .

That may we’ll be true but unfortunately events on the day still don’t show anything  to suggest a mob hit  , unless Ruby / the mob  somehow  engineered the queue at western Union and Oswalds desire for a shirt .... 

 

[mjmooney]

46 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

That may we’ll be true but unfortunately events on the day still don’t show anything  to suggest a mob hit  , unless Ruby / the mob  somehow  engineered the queue at western Union and Oswalds desire for a shirt .... 

 

These things don't go like clockwork. Read an account of the Gavrilo Princip (and accomplices) hit on Franz Ferdinand - it's a catalogue of incompetent cockups and flukes. He still ended up dead, though. 

[villakram]

Wasn't there a certain practically pristine bullet found afterwards on a hospital gurney that clearly vomits all sorts of dispersions on the official story... you know, given all the damage attributed to it.

[tonyh29]

1 minute ago, mjmooney said:

These things don't go like clockwork. Read an account of the Gavrilo Princip (and accomplices) hit on Franz Ferdinand - it's a catalogue of incompetent cockups and flukes. He still ended up dead, though. 

I was there in Sarajevo earlier this year ... not really relevant to the discussion but i did go visit the spot where it took place 

FF was a planned hit and Princip got lucky with the driver taking a wrong turn and coming right back in front of him  ... Ruby didn’t get lucky in a failed attempt  , he just spontaneously came out of western union saw the fuss and went for a look ... Oswald should have been long gone by then , had Ruby been planning a hit he would have had to been in place much earlier  ... the alternative is that The mob somehow engineered Holmes to turn up at the station and delay Oswald , Oswald then has to be in on the conspiracy and further delay himself and western a union harve to be in on the conspiracy to ensure the length of the queue in the shop ... not to mention the person that Ruby was wiring the money to needing to be in on it to ask him to go do it in the first place 

 

[maqroll]

3 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

I live in NYC now and I can say for certainty that the garbage removal is still 100% controlled by the certain "New Jersey types."

The Giants?

[Stevo985]

SOmetimes I forget just how utterly absurd it is that Donald Trump is president

[ThunderPower_14]

I genuinely can't believe the cognitive dissonance with regards to the NFL kneelers and the first amendment. It's staggering.

 

The 1st amendment literally states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

 

And you've got the President and millions of "patriots" campaigning for these guys to be fired because they've exercised their first amendment rights. The same Americans that in any other context would shoot you dead if you questioned their right to free speech.