Here's some excerpts. I don't know that any of it is all that surprising.
He reported paying taxes, in turn, on a number of his overseas ventures. In 2017, the president's $750 contribution to the operations of the U.S. government was dwarfed by the $15,598 he or his companies paid in Panama, the $145,400 in India and the $156,824 in the Philippines.
Mr. Trump has an established track record of stiffing his lenders. But the tax returns reveal that he has failed to pay back far more money than previously known: a total of $287 million since 2010.
The I.R.S. considers forgiven debt to be income, but Mr. Trump was able to avoid taxes on much of that money by reducing his ability to declare future business losses. For the rest, he took advantage of a provision of the Great Recession bailout that allowed income from canceled debt to be completely deferred for five years, then spread out evenly over the next five. He declared the first $28.2 million in 2014.
Ethically, do I need to go back to subscribing to the NYT again? This and Bouie.
Another excerpt:
Even while declaring losses, he has managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by taking tax deductions on what most people would consider personal expenses, including residences, aircraft and $70,000 in hairstyling for television.
Well, fucketty. I forgot to claim my $70K deduction for hairstyling.
A lot of business losses were exorbitant consulting fees, some of which matched up with records of fees Ivanka received, and the article essentially says that there is no plausible explanation other than gift tax evasion.
So there's going to be some kind of release of secret documents about Biden in the next couple hours, right?
If he spent $70k on his hair, what the fuck would it look like without that kind of money?
There's Alway A Tweet. This guy has more projection than a 24 screen cineplex.
I guess my question is answered in the OP, but I didn't read it right away.
The Guardianhits the high points. But I don't like to subscribe to them because they left Manchester.
If you report losses such that your income for a year is negative and you aren't a posing-billionaire or the president, the IRS will show up at ask questions until they figure out how you are paying to live if you have no income.
LB, use an incognito window!
My favorite bit was the Seven Springs estate (in NY, not the one in PA). It's a big old country home he couldn't develop the way he wanted to due to local NIMBYs. So he got a conservation easement on it: he would keep it as it was (because he couldn't do anything else), and was able to write this off as a $20 million+ charitable deduction. But while the building should have been a business asset, he and his family treated it as a private residence (and have written publicly for decades about doing so). About $120 million out of his $130 million total charitable deductions over this time period were conservation easements of that sort. If this was given any sort of judicial or administration approval, the officials involved should be ashamed of themselves and be shunned from polite society.
Fucking bullshit, it is. An embarrassment to anyone who loves their country.
He's also facing a hundred million dollar liability to the IRS if he loses his audit battle, plus another $300 million plus in personally guaranteed debt coming due in the next four years. He needs that graft bigly.
Did Trump use a private email server to evade taxes? If no, why is this news?
Huh, I grew up about 10 miles from there and this is the first time I've heard of that place.
15- It involves the other biggest threat to our nation, how much people paid for hair styling!
Remember when John Edwards got a lot of shit for paying $800 for a couple of haircuts? Good times.
Cripes, all this and *I* get audited for a conservation easement deduction? I have some powerful 5%-vs-0.01% anger here.
An embarrassment to anyone who loves their country.
Not if their country is Russia.
The hairstyling thing oddly didn't bother me. It included other Trump family members' hairstyling over that period, so let's say it's $80k for two people over five years. That's a convenient $666.66/person-month. That's absurdly expensive, but same order-of-magnitude for normal rich-guy-asshole haircuts (hyphens to preempt Moby). if you make $400 million over that time period on just your image and literally nothing else, spend a lot on your image, even if your image sucks. I'm glad other people care about it, but I think the things that really matter are elsewhere: either he's the world's most incompetent businessman, who thinks the goal of a business is to optimize for paying the least taxes (spoiler alert: losing a dollar to pay no taxes on it is generally less valuable than just not losing that dollar), or he's fraudulent padding expenses. I think it's mostly the former (otherwise, why is Trump Tower profitable?) and a little bit of the latter (including the gift tax thing), but time will tell.
In the end, I think the goal is to die before he has to pay his debts. That's the trick to living like a king.
You don't need to prove the devil does his hair.
21.2:. That might have been his plan, but at some point it changed to -- become king and then the laws don't apply to you.
How does the Parshale thing play into it? I'm sure the timing is no coincidence.
Trump is a liar and a cheat, and I'm confident that an honest audit would show that he'd overstated his expenses.
Borrowing money based on having profits and paying taxes based on having only losses. That's some kind of fraud.
LB, use an incognito window!
The NYT now blocks most incognito users as well (I think they learned to count visits for them too). If you're deft with the keyboard, you can select-all and copy to a text editor before the article is covered over.
24: But he also appears to be a legitimately shit businessman. He made a ton of money from The Apprentice, his one major financial success, and appears to have gone right back to pissing it away on dumb deals, just like he did with his dad's money.
I am now reading the article in an incognito tab. But I'm also not using my regular computer, so it is possible that this computer has never accessed the NYT in years.
The big surprise for me was how lucrative the Apprentice and his general celebrity status was.
"The Apprentice," along with the licensing and endorsement deals that flowed from his expanding celebrity, brought Mr. Trump a total of $427.4 million, The Times's analysis of the records found.
And yes, I pay the New York Times. The best news source in the US is necessarily going to be complicit if the country decides to decline and fall, but the NYT is still the best news source in the US.
I blame CNN and NBC more of the media companies.
I agree with Rebecca Solnit that the big news is 300-400 million in personally collaterized debt, much to foreign lenders, coming due in the next term, with no income in sight to pay it off. No aspiring public servant could get any clearance with even a fraction of that debt on a proportional basis. On an absolute basis, I doubt anyone with that level of debt has ever even tried to work for the government. Normal people, including the Bidend of the world, can't even get that kind of credit; even the Cheneys and Rubins and even Tillerson and his SecTreas and SecComm were not incompetent enough to ever need it.
Dumb question because I am dumb and don't do my own taxes. Presumably Ivanka & Donald are in same bracket, because the brackets stop going up at some ridiculously low amount of income. So what's to be gained, between them, in paying her a consulting fee and writing it off as a loss? Won't she have to pay the same tax on it?
The story says gift tax avoidance, but if she's paying income tax on it that's probably a higher rate than the gift tax- depends how you spread it out. But it went to her consulting company not her so I wouldn't be surprised if that company had similar tax avoidance schemes.
Does this lead to auditing and exposing the kids' taxes as well?
34, 35: if nothing else, might have been about avoiding Medicare tax that would have applied if the payments were wages rather than fees. Social Security tax is capped but Medicare isn't. It wouldn't have been a lot of money but these people seem to have a really deep aversion to paying taxes.
34: I suspect there are more layers to it. Tangled webs and intention to deceive and all of that.
In this context can I recommend "No More Champagne: Churchill and his money" again. This bit in particular:
In a blunt summary of the problem, the Times speculated: "Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president."
reminded me that Churchill got a letter from his bank managers about his unpaid overdraft on the day that France surrendered to Germany, and that his finances were a mess right through to about 1942 when the US rights on his memoirs started bringing in vast sums. It's one area in which Johnson resembles his idol: both hopeless with money.
Both the ongoing defunding and destruction of the the function of the IRS* and the near abandonment of enforcement white-collar crime**/money-laundering (aside from that linked to terrorism***) contributed greatly to the landscape in which Trump/Manafort/Michael Cohen/Deutsche Bank/a bunch of Russian oligarchs flourished in.
But I guess it was always thus to some degree.
*Both parties guilty on this. Greatly accelerated by the IRS**** "scandal" under Obama. Greatly aided and abetted by the fuckwits in the press who saw it as "watergate-like." Stenographer par excellence Bob Woodward was particularly full of shit on that one.
**I guess other than Martha Stewart. And Eliot Spitzer.
***Our unhinged response to 9/11 continues to fuck us in so many different ways.
****And that whole thing was precipitated in large part by underfunding. Trying to sort the political from the "charitable" with minimal resouces.
26: you get a certain number of articles, though. I read it on mu iPad and find that if I clear the cache on Safari, I can read articles again.
This seems like a good point- even if he loses, Trump still owes half a billion and he has classified information very valuable to foreign countries. Maybe the only mitigating factor is he's such a moron and blowhard that he might not relay it accurately.
26, 40: On iOS, I can usually read NYT articles in Safari by choosing the 'reader view' option. This will show the article text even if the normal view shows the login page. Note: I usually have all cookies and cross-site tracking turned off in Safari; no idea if that works on lower security settings.
If you need an extra shot of hate, here's this weekend's splash story on Boris Johnson whining about not being paid enough:
The real chef kiss is the kicker graf that kind of suggests that the newspaper might hire him if he quits.
How pure is your hate? At the moment, mine is literally composed of elemental opprobrium
So I guess he paid $750 in Federal taxes two years in a row? (2016 and 2017).
I suspect there was some interesting corrupt cost-benefit calculations that went into arriving at that number. Maybe with bonus accountant/President negotiations.
The real chef kiss is the kicker graf that kind of suggests that the newspaper might hire him if he quits.
If Boris Johnson resigns as PM in order to make more money by writing a column for the Daily Mail, I will immediately subscribe to the Daily Mail out of pure gratitude.
Let's say, hypothetically, you're an accountant and doing these taxes. It's got to be a huge number of hours to take a tax bill down to zero. Do you insist on getting paid your fee in installments every week or are you like the gatekeepers of Saruman and treated better than the orcs for long enough that you don't worry?
He wanted to be able to say he paid taxes so that was the largest sum he was willing to part with. It's a fucking hilarious number.
47: Another possibility is the accountant is being stiffed too, and finally realized that he's never going to be paid, and so decided to take his payment in revenge.
Yes. Accountant suggested at least $1000and he countered with half that. Split the difference.
Yes. Accountant suggested at least $1000and he countered with half that. Split the difference.
https://twitter.com/KenTremendous/status/1310420515060760576
I think he should have paid $666 because it would help with the Liberty University crowd.
52 reminds me of the time Trump cashed a check for 13 cents. Old but still so good.
One dollar would also be very funny. As well as, N hundred and one dollars, for that Price is Right feel.
It was also stupid to pay the exact same ceremonial amount both years because that makes it obvious that it's a bullshit number he just made up because he does whatever he wants. Surely no individual filer in the country has paid precisely the same amount two years in a row.
Yeah, you'd have to really work at paying the exact same amount in taxes, since basic stuff like the bracket boundaries and standard deduction are adjusted every year.
46: from your lips to my ear'ole. I mean we're already a country where that could totally happen, being a country like that without Johnson as PM would be an improvement to the tune of one Johnson exactly, and there's some benefit in being clear about these things.
It actually restores my faith in the strength of the British political system that it is obviously so difficult to profit by peculation or corruption, even at the highest level, that working for the Daily Telegraph is more lucrative.
One presumes that serving as PM of the UK involves a whole lot more work than simply bloviating at a ghostwriter for an hour or so a week. On a pounds/hour basis, journalism has got to look pretty good.
59: Can you be sure the real peculation doesn't come in vehicles like real estate that take a while to pay off, so one needs columns for living expenses in the meantime? (What's the balance sheet like for PMs 10-15 years out of office?)
Do the tabloids still require you to commit felonies?
I think October will be the month that the U.S. passes the U.K. in Covid deaths per capita. You guys aren't as good at being horrible.
You cannot, with fil-thee lu-ker, corrupt the Brit Prime Minis-ter,
But seeing what the man will do, quite clean, there's no occasion to...
63: Yeah, for short sprints the UK can be spectacularly awful, but for sustained commitment, the US can't be topped.
Brits are very deadly over shorter distances.
Ethically, do I need to go back to subscribing to the NYT again? This and Bouie.
I'm going to need them to give this like 10% of the coverage they gave Clinton's email before I even consider it. And I was just a crossword subscriber.
(Or maybe?:
You cannot hope to bribe the Brit Prime Minister, ex-journalist,
But seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to.
Whatever.)
Has anyone yet mentioned the real scandal? It's pretty clear that somebody violated the law in turning over these records to the NYT.
70: Civil disobedience. I was actually thinking about the competing demands of professional ethics ( who leaked? IRS employee, tax lawyer?) and other moral obligations just this morning. Kind of like Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers.
I'm going to need them to give this like 10% of the coverage they gave Clinton's email before I even consider it.
They may hit that, at least. The article said they plan to do a bunch of other reports on other findings from the tax returns over the next several weeks.
I'm still hoping they find the payment for the pee tape.
60: Tony Blair definitely parlayed his connections into big money, David Cameron is doing the same with the important distinction that he was rich to begin with. That said British politicians are startlingly poor compared to Congress: www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2018/11/24/american-politicians-rich/
71: I only learned recently that Ellsberg got off the hook for alleged Espionage Act crimes because of government misconduct - including illegal wiretaps. The charges were dismissed on what rightwingers like to call "a technicality." Seems like you can count on Trump to weaponize the law on this one. Whoever slipped those documents to the Times has some Ellsberg-level guts.
73: If they find the actual pee tape, I'm not going to watch it.
I think October will be the month that the U.S. passes the U.K. in Covid deaths per capita. You guys aren't as good at being horrible.
Worldometer already has the US above the UK, 632 vs 618 deaths per million. However, I think the deaths per capita from the UK's second wave (currently pretty hitting hard now, but still in the mostly-cases stage) will be worse than those from the US's third (which looked like it was mostly hitting low population states).
Johns Hopkins still has the U.S. at 626 per million and the U.K. at 633.
70: NYT claims that the person who slipped them the tax returns had legal access to them.
79: That may be, but that doesn't mean they are allowed to share them.
But yes, when Biden is president he should offer the leaker a pardon, and possibly a medal.
I was going to make a joke about how long until some idiot accuses the NYT of violating HIPAA but I'm way too late.
If it was a family member or someone else with no legal obligation to keep them private they can share them. That's how Mary shared the previously disclosed couple years with the Times. His accountant, attorney, or federal employees are legally prohibited. Other employees maybe by their contract but I don't think by law.
79: And it's completely legal under the 1st Amendment for the Times to print it. But as peep said, the person who shared them may not have been (probably was not) allowed to share them.
There are two people who have the legal authority to disclose the Trump returns. They are named Donald and Melania.*. If one of those people approved the release, no crime.
A fun idea, but pretty unlikely actually. Lots of employees of law firms and accountants of either of those people had legal access to the documents, but not a legal right to remove them from the premises. It is theft, and additional crimes if the thief worked for the IRS or the White House.
I'm guessing the source is a former employee of the IT department of a law or accounting firm, who believed they could cover the electronic tracks. They may even be right.
*assuming they filed jointly.
It's also the Trump administration. They probably accidentally cc'ed them to some guy in Moline named Micah Cohen or something.
83: Anyone the Trumps voluntarily gave them to without some particular confidential relationship could legally disclose them, couldn't they? That is, what law would be broken if the leaker were an admin assistant in the Trump organization who didn't commit any crimes getting her hands on them? (There could be something obvious, this isn't my area.)
This is what I was basing 81 on. Good thing Trump doesn't have any ex spouses who might hate him.
Under section 7213 of the Tax Code, unauthorized willful disclosure of any return or return information by a federal employee (and certain other persons) is a felony; and under section 7431 of the Tax Code, civil damages may also be appropriate for willful of negligent violations, depending on the circumstances. In addition, if convicted of such a crime, a federal employee can be suspended or fired. But those rules apply to federal employees, not private citizens. A private citizen - like a spouse and or an ex-spouse - may legally have access to a taxpayer's tax return. And, once your tax return information is disclosed to a third party, that information is no longer protected under federal tax laws.
86: Most of the leaked returns were during his current marriage.
I'm confused, it may well be illegal, but does anyone care, or is it just delving into details for the hell of it?
I imagine anyone with access to the returns who's not a federal employee or an inner family member would be heavily NDA'd.
Are previous spouses typically entitled to see future tax records as part of divorce settlements to make sure they're being paid what they're owed?
Anyway enforcement of an NDA is a civil not criminal matter.
85: An admin assistant in the Trump organization has a confidential relationship with the boss, so do the janitors. Also, they almost certainly signed nondisclosure agreements acknowledging their duties to their employer. Even without that, the tax returns are valuable personal property.* A low-level can't walk off with the work computer, and also can't walk off with a thumb drive of confidential documents.
They only took copies, not the originals. From a number of corporate espionage prosecutions, that's not a defense. Removing an unauthorized copy is still theft.
*The New York Times probably didn't pay for the documents, but the market value of Trump tax returns would be the amount that a company like Gawker, RIP, would have been willing to pay. Lots.
87: I wonder if the person or persons will get in trouble, and I also think the leakersare very brave, Paquet said as much when he explained why they weeen't releasing the actual returns.
We are not making the records themselves public because we do not want to jeopardize our sources, who have taken enormous personal risks to help inform the public.
86: Those laws don't apply to private citizens, but more general theft statutes do.
89: Not typically, but not impossible at a sufficiently high wealth level.
Another theory: The IRS whistleblower lawyer legalizes disclosure of an alleged tax cheat's returns to the IRS whistleblower office. Whistleblowers are also permitted to disclose the fraudulent tax returns to the whistleblower's lawyers for the purpose of preparing the whistleblower filing. It does not permit disclosure to the public -- in fact, a whistleblower who breaks confidentiality forfeits their whistleblower award. But it's easy to imagine that someone with legal access provided the documents to a law firm, making them available to another set of paralegals, consulting accountants, IT managers, etc. Someone at the whistleblower's law firm might figure they don't have a confidentiality obligation to Trump (wrong). They might also figure that since the whistleblower's identity is supposed to be kept confidential, the investigation might not reach that law firm (maybe).
Or something boring, like a Trump lawyer left a thumb drive on an airplane and the Times source found it.
It was Melania in the Observatory with a Fax Machine.
92: Right. And note that while the NYT explicitly states that the newspaper acquired the returns legally, it makes no such claim about the source of the documents. (And, as you point out, Baquet hints strongly that the source could be in big legal trouble.)
My guess is someone at the Joint Committee on Taxation.
One thing about Trump has always been something of a wildcard -- people really hate the sonofabitch, and they are going to be motivated to do things they wouldn't otherwise dream of doing.
Those laws don't apply to private citizens, but more general theft statutes do.
Do state penal codes generally cover copying confidential documents as theft? I honestly don't know this stuff, but my off-the-cuff guess would have been no.
I could ask our firm's counsel what the criminal penalties are for stealing documents, but I think that might make things awkward.
96: Sergei Aleynikov was convicted under New York law for copying some code that was the property of his employer, Goldman Sachs. His conviction for the same thing under federal law had been overturned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov
He was convicted under Penal Code 165.07, "Unlawful Use of Secret Scientific Material," which probably doesn't cover tax returns.
The more suitable New York statute is Penal Code 156.29 and 156.30, "Unlawful Duplication of Computer Related Material." It's a Class E felony if the duplication deprived the owner of $2500 or more "economic value or benefit". There's an easy argument that the "economic value or benefit" to Trump of his tax returns remaining private was more than $2500-- he's spent much, much more than that on lawyers to prevent the publication of the tax returns following various subpoenas.
Sure it's a stretch, but my assumption is that AG Barr put the entire Department of Justice, including but not limited to the FBI, on the case a few minutes after he saw the Times article. If they can find the source they will bring felony charges (assuming he survives being apprehended). If they can't, they will call the Times reporting team before a grand jury, and when they refuse to disclose, they will spend some in jail for contempt of court. Of course, that's a dream come true, not a punishment, for a Times reporter, it's something they dream of.
96: Sergei Aleynikov was convicted under New York law for copying some code that was the property of his employer, Goldman Sachs. His conviction for the same thing under federal law had been overturned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov
He was convicted under Penal Code 165.07, "Unlawful Use of Secret Scientific Material," which probably doesn't cover tax returns.
The more suitable New York statute is Penal Code 156.29 and 156.30, "Unlawful Duplication of Computer Related Material." It's a Class E felony if the duplication deprived the owner of $2500 or more "economic value or benefit". There's an easy argument that the "economic value or benefit" to Trump of his tax returns remaining private was more than $2500-- he's spent much, much more than that on lawyers to prevent the publication of the tax returns following various subpoenas.
Sure it's a stretch, but my assumption is that AG Barr put the entire Department of Justice, including but not limited to the FBI, on the case a few minutes after he saw the Times article. If they can find the source they will bring felony charges (assuming he survives being apprehended). If they can't, they will call the Times reporting team before a grand jury, and when they refuse to disclose, they will spend some in jail for contempt of court. Of course, that's a dream come true, not a punishment, for a Times reporter, it's something they dream of.
96: Sergei Aleynikov was convicted under New York law for copying some code that was the property of his employer, Goldman Sachs. His conviction for the same thing under federal law had been overturned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov
He was convicted under Penal Code 165.07, "Unlawful Use of Secret Scientific Material," which probably doesn't cover tax returns.
The more suitable New York statute is Penal Code 156.29 and 156.30, "Unlawful Duplication of Computer Related Material." It's a Class E felony if the duplication deprived the owner of $2500 or more "economic value or benefit". There's an easy argument that the "economic value or benefit" to Trump of his tax returns remaining private was more than $2500-- he's spent much, much more than that on lawyers to prevent the publication of the tax returns following various subpoenas.
Sure it's a stretch, but my assumption is that AG Barr put the entire Department of Justice, including but not limited to the FBI, on the case a few minutes after he saw the Times article. If they can find the source they will bring felony charges (assuming he survives being apprehended). If they can't, they will call the Times reporting team before a grand jury, and when they refuse to disclose, they will spend some in jail for contempt of court. Of course, that's a dream come true, not a punishment, for a Times reporter, it's something they dream of.
Comments 99 and 100 are in breach of NY Penal Code 156.29 and 156.30.
98: And there's caselaw making documents like tax returns "computer material" because they were prepared on a computer? Boy it's hard writing a narrowly focused statute.
Definitiion of Computer Material in New York:
"Computer material" is property and means any computer data or computer program which:
. . .
(c) is not and is not intended to be available to anyone other than the person or persons rightfully in possession thereof or selected persons having access thereto with his, her or their consent and which accords or may accord such rightful possessors an advantage over competitors or other persons who do not have knowledge or the benefit
thereof.
Anyway, the feds would prosecute under federal law. The best case might be for Theft of Trade Secret:
18 usc 1839(3):
the term "trade secret" means all forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic, or engineering information, including, patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas, designs, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures, programs, or codes, whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically, or in writing if-- (A) the owner thereof has taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret; and (B) the information derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable through proper means by, another person who can obtain economic value from the disclosure or use of the information;
18 USC 1833
(a)Whoever, with intent to convert a trade secret, that is related to a product or service used in or intended for use in interstate or foreign commerce, to the economic benefit of anyone other than the owner thereof, and intending or knowing that the offense will, injure any owner of that trade secret, knowingly--
. . .
(2)without authorization copies, duplicates, sketches, draws, photographs, downloads, uploads, alters, destroys, photocopies, replicates, transmits, delivers, sends, mails, communicates, or conveys such information;
shall, except as provided in subsection (b), be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
103: Right, I read the definition, I was wondering if there's any caselaw interpreting it, given that all documents are prepared on computers these days. Presumably the intent in passing a law criminalizing conduct relating to computers wasn't to criminalize conduct relating to documents generally. Plausibly, that will have been the effect because drafting is hard, but it depends on what judges have said.
Theft of Trade Secret, again, looks like a bit of a stretch. Not a huge stretch, it'd probably work, but i wouldn't think of tax returns as fitting comfortably within the core of that definition.
His trade is defrauding and this lets out the secret.
I saw in the second NYT article today that one bit of Trump cashing in on his TV fame was $500,000 to promote Oreos. I looked around for ephemera of that time and found an August 28, 2009 video on the official Oreo Facebook page with him holding a "press conference" alongside a person in a Golden Double Stuff Oreo mascot costume.
Weirdly, the advertisers seem to have then taken the camera out in front of Trump Tower to do vox pops, and the comments focused on him making money off the endorsement deal, having too much money to begin with, etc. And another mascot with a pseudo-protest-y sign parading around and some humans following with their own signs. Bizarre ab ovo.
105 is exactly, exactly right.
106.1: of course it was golden.
Funny how its always the one who leaks evidence of a giant crime that end up in jail, rather than the perpetrators.
America: Where you now have to specify you want your Oreo without urine.
I am noticing signs of people getting emotionally invested in the upcoming debates. This is a very bad idea. You should spend this evening with everything in your home unplugged, reading Epictetus by candlelight.
(I created a Twitter account! But I have contracted with heebie for commenting services through the end of 2020, so I will fulfill my obligations here first.)
109: I think it's "America: Where everyone quietly accepts that Oreos contain urine now after brief, lukewarm objections."
Anyway, from Twitter I learned that Eric Trump is either coming out or telling poorly phrased lies about having gay friends.
110: There's a provision that lets me extend the terms without your consent. SOR-RYYYY.
Stop-lass order, as they are called in Scotland.
|| Oh, hey, by the way, it would be really good if the Dems could pick up an additional congressional seat in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan. Montana too. There ought to be smart people who can steer you to which races in those states this is most likely, in case anyone in a safe state is looking for a race to adopt. |>
I'm, for the first time in my life, in the habit of donating to candidates. I will probably keep it up for the 2022 elections.