Misadministration

[H2O Man]

“Judges, lawyers and politicians have a license to steal. We don’t need one.”
-- Carlo Gambino


The announcement about Charlie Kushner brings to mind the very topic that I was going to discuss on the last essay I posted upon this forum. What are the connections between business, politics, and organized crime? In that last essay, I sought to document the dangers we face due to corporations having far, far more socio-political power than citizens. Here, I'd like to talk about organized crime and politics.

Now, among many other relatives employed at all levels of law enforcement & intelligence, I had two uncles who were NYS BCI Senior Investigators. One of these two often worked under cover in his younger years. From my uncles, I learned that there were all types of organized crime. "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" are a specific ethnic group. "Mob" is the general term they used for organized gangs of criminals of all types.

"We don't really care when they kill each other," my uncle told me. "It's when they kill human beings that we do." I learned about his experiences undercover in Albany, NY, where he infiltrated the Irish mob that was connected to Boston. Of being in a meeting in a room in a highrise, where the group suspected they had been infiltrated by a cop. They hung some poor fool out a window, thinking it was him. My uncle joined the chorus of, "Drop him!"

His widow told my son & I about an event from that time that haunted him. One night, he was hanging with other members. For no reason, the others beat an old man to death. My uncle couldn't break cover to rescue the guy. So I think he had a pretty good idea of the nature of the mob. His brother -- the other legendary senior investigator -- worked with federal agents to put the mobsters that ran boxing in our region into the federal pen. (This despite these men being really extra nice to my brothers & I when we boxed. We were dumb teenagers!)

I remember my uncle saying there are two things to keep in mind. The first was that the belief the top mobsters were smart was false. They were guys who couldn't make a living in business without having to break the law. They just dared to break the law violently, often using tough guys who couldn't spell their own names for muscle. (They did attempt to "hire" my oldest brother, who was savage when he fought.)

The second thing, he said, was that up to the 1970s, they had a code of honor and would rather spend time in prison than cut a deal to help themselves. He said that generation's kids were pampered bullies, who used cocaine, were violent for fun, and couldn't keep their mouth shut. They usually took the first deal offered to them.

Maybe it's just me, but I find myself thinking about two connvicted felons ....... the one who was had started in real estate in 1968, declared bankruptcy a few times, and is about to inhabit the White House again, and Charlie Kushner, who started in real estate in 1985. And how both donated to politicians in order to get good treatment and not prosecuted .... until both were.

Now, buying influence is one thing. But buying politicians is another. For many years, corporations have written the laws on things like the environment that politicians have eagerly passed. They set limits on how much toxic chemicals they can expose human beings to. They have figured out how to do what mob bosses weren't intelligent enough to do. Pass the laws that make their crimes legal. More than that, they dictate much of our country's foreign policy. So they have way, way more political power than you or I. Heck, they've even hypnotized a large enough percentage of the population to elect the ass clown of mob bosses as president. Twice.

That is what we are up against, from top to bottom. It can seem somewhat overwhelming, I suspect. But it is up to us to do our best to halt this decline. So the first thing is to try to slow down the rate of decay. I'll suggest looking to the US Constitution to start. Studying the who thing, including the Bill of Rights. Not in the Amendment 2 fixation the brain-dead maga cult does, of course, but in a positive way. This is just my opinion, of course, but it might prove better than hand-wringing. I could be wrong.

[NewHendoLib]

1. Wisdom.

[H2O Man]

3. Thank you!

[Saoirse9]

2. Curious. How will studying the Constitution slow the rate of decay?

Anything is better than hand-wringing, but if we know the Constitution inside and out won't that just hurt our hearts as we watch it be dismantled?

[H2O Man]

4. Great questions.

Now, I could be wrong, but I suspect you are hinting that we need to study Malcolm X along with the Constitution. That seems to be a pattern when you respond to my essays. Am I right?

Malcolm taught that if people are to act differently, they must first think differently. For if people limit their thinking to what it already has been when they suffer defeats, they will continue to suffer and be defeated.

If people study the Constitution -- including that Bill of Rights you always talk about -- they will find it defines avenues for citizens to take to try to make positive change. In the past, most Americans have taken the Constitution for granted. We do not have that luxury today. Just as the Founding Fathers were thinking outside the box that old King George and the British economic powers that be attempted to keep them in, we need to do so today.

Let's just take Amendment 1. How many Democrats would you think have exercised their Amendment 1 rights in the years since 2016? How many members of this forum? How often have they contacted their representatives? Local, state, and/or federal? Including the ones that were once republicans, but have transformed into maga cult members? How many have participated in a group action to pressure their elected representatives?

Now, there are times when I at least attempt to think outside of the box. An example that you may recall: somewhere around a decade ago, when the issue of fracking was being contested, one of my NYS senators refused to meet with anyone from the environmental community. That didn't seem right to me, considering Amendment 1. It just didn't sit right with me. One evening, when I was about to speak at a church in a city in this region, I had a surprise. I saw frames of old newspaper articles from the late 1950s. You know this story, of course, but at my age, I tend to repeat myself.

Those articles were about a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr, who gave a speech at the church from exasctly where I would soon be standing. I thought about that almost the whole night. I decided if that senator refused to meet with me, I'd go on a hunger strike. He ignored me, of course. But as time went on, and even the NY Times contacted me, this became more difficult for him to do. School students were writing to him, saying that from their social studies classes' lesson, they thought he was wrong to refuse to talk to me. And that was reported in the news. Finally, after I spoke to an audience of 1,200 at the state capital, the guy met with me.

[Saoirse9]

32. I have been schooled

Thanks for the lesson.

[H2O Man]

34. As soon as I

recognized that you were thinking of Malcolm, I knew there must be some Lennon lyric connected here. But I will let you fill that in.

[bigtree]

5. I think you're right about these low-level florida mobsters

...what I'd look to confront this Florida mob will be a confluence of interests pushing back which are threatened by this clumsy, overly-brazen group of erstwhile influencers, two-bit crooks, and fugitives trying to outrun sex crime prosecutions and other criminality who Trump is assembling around him.

What's less clear is where the actual players will emerge with enough clout inside and outside of government to make their nation and people-dominating dreams come true, and where the interests that would resist them will stand up and fight.

In that game, I'd think we have as much, if not more, opportunity to stage a resistance. People who seek to dominate in countries as large as ours always forget the fickleness of the ones they intend to influence away from their own interests.

In America, self-interest rules much more intensely than does the ambition of an addled and fast declining old man. Trump, lame-duck from the day he's sworn in, will either lead from his elevated perch, or he'll lord over a chaotic fight for power and control - of not only our government institutions, but the outlets of dissent, resistance, and free expression.

Those are necessarily going to be the first targets of an incoming, demonstrably autocratic president assuming office without a clear mandate from the people, and bent on getting his own way.

Elections are profoundly decisive, but politics isn't a static enterprise. It's nebulous, and influenced and affected in myriad and unpredictable ways, making it imperative for us to stay engaged and ready to advantage our aims with every instigation of democratic action.

Studying up is a good suggestion for these times. I'm looking at Ireland's fight for independence today. A bit ahead of the game, but I had a thought it might come in handy one day.

[H2O Man]

9. Interesting!

"....... politics isn't a static enterprise." I love it.

I'm in communication with a number of my cousins in Ireland. I really enjoy talking with them. However, I do notice that the majority of them tend to limit their thinking -- and hence, behavior -- to attempting to live in the past. Some from The Troubles, some from when peace broke out. And the majority to a time before immigration began to introduce "others" to the local populations. Quite a few have mastered the art of combining antisemitism with the hatred of Islamic people -- something that we witness in the domestic maga population.

It is important that we do not attach ourselves to the ball & chain of hatred. Or to accept or invest in victimhood. I believe in non-violence, though I recognize the right to self-defense. Many years ago, at a public rally, a gentleman broke a board on my head. But I'm not going to let some jackass come onto my property with a board to hit me with. Not happening.

It is a strange time. This morning, I was thinking about some of the writings of the late Vine Deloria, Jr. How he said that it was essential that minority groups study the Constitution, because it does in fact protect group rights -- at least in theory.

[H2O Man]

12. Also .....

my west coast brother sent me this link. I'm curious what you think of it?

[bigtree]

17. I often wonder as I look at China, at the people there

...how long this relatively young nation can get by being satisfied with the comparative mediocrity of ambition and challenge that Americans seem so satisfied with.

Joe Biden was on to it with his relatively modest infrastructure act and the chips deal, but China has not only shed themselves of what most Americans believe is still mired in some sort of feudalism, and has a quasi-capitalist energy which builds things at an incredible scale and rate.

It's an engine for development, seemingly for development sake; huge concrete projects of roads, buildings, and technology, elevating those who are able to make themselves a part of that symbiotic machine; and driving those who aren't able further to ground.

That's the landscape which produces all of these goods Americans rely on at lower cost. It's a system which will react badly when their game is disrupted. I'd guess Taiwan will be their first provocation, probably looking to force us away from severing the relationship which sustains them right now; one in which we benefit much more on a one-to one scale; but one that, nonetheless keeps them in pocket money to continue their expansion.

Upset that apple cart, and you'll need to consider that China's next most profitable industry is their military production. And, it's like in 'My Girl Friday' where the man who shot someone argued that he did it because the gun was provided by the manufacturers for him to take advantage of.

"Production for use,' was the way he put it.

[H2O Man]

19. My brother thinks

that China will move on Taiwan. That would upset the apple cart. While I hope not, I suspect that Taiwan might actually be closer to China than Hawaii is to our mainland. But perceptions can be funny things ...... I remember Malcolm X saying it was foolish for the US to call Taiwan "China," and keep "Red China" out of the UN. I think that Nixon agreed with him on that.

[bigtree]

25. with Ukraine it was a land invasion

...with Taiwan, there aren't many ports that could support a full scale invasion, and those can be beefed up to repel China if they attack.

We just sent them some weapons.

[Easterncedar]

35. Will Trump intervene for Taiwan?

I don’t think so.

[bigtree]

38. they don't really need him to militarily

...he will probably keep them safe from any serious sanctions that they can't adjust to, likely coordinating the sanction response with China, as he's basically a Russia/China dupe.

But the harbors can be effectively mined and defended by Taiwan right now.

[malthaussen]

6. Apropos of that, I remember the scene in "Back to School" ...

... where Rodney Dangerfield attempts to educate the professor in the realities of the Mob and building a factory. The professor, of course, snidely sneers that he "doesn't do business with gangsters" while the other students in the class are busily scribbling notes on the way things really work.

-- Mal

[H2O Man]

13. Ha!

I like Dangerfield, but have not seen that one.

There were a couple boxers who, along with their management, refused to do business with the mob in the 1950s. Floyd Patterson and Carmen Basilio come to mind as the best examples. But when they wanted title shots, their managers had to do business with them.

[malthaussen]

29. It's a funny flick, worth your time.

Dangerfield is a millionaire land developer who decides to go back to college in his 40s. He develops a crush on his English professor, and to impress her, has Kurt Vonnegut write a term paper about Kurt Vonnegut's works. The prof realizes immediately that Rodney didn't write the paper himself, and tells him that whoever did write it "Knows nothing about Vonnegut." (Kurt would probably agree).

-- Mal

[moniss]

7. A quote from a guy who knew a thing or two and

that is James R Hoffa who said:

"Mob guys had muscle, and where in hell do you think employers got the tough guys when they wanted to break a strike?"

[H2O Man]

14. Some of the

area's boxing promoters owned construction companies back in the days my brothers & I boxed. A number of fighters worked for them. And provided muscle when needed.

I remember thinking it curious when a professional fighter who had been on the undercard of The Fight of the Century asked my brother if he could stay at our house. He was working on a construction project 35 miles away, but said he couldn't find a motel room. So he stayed with us for a week or so.

Years later, a 100% reliable source told me the promoter/company owner had tasked him with bringing my brother into their fold. He said that then, my uncle would leave him alone. But the boxer eventually said he could not do it, because staying with my family reminded him of the program The Waltons.

My other brother & I encountered the promoter/company owner ringside at the second Frazier vs Ali fight. We were dumb kids, of course, and liked the attention a guy in a silk suit with a large roll of cash always gave us. We had no idea! We had grown used to people in that circle saying, "Hey, can you talk to your uncle? Tell him I treat you good." A while later, while coordinating with federal investigators, my uncle put a number of them -- promoters included -- into the federal pen.

[moniss]

20. Many people today have no idea how big and importatn boxing used to be

back in the '30's through the '50's. I couldn't wait to sit down and watch "Gillette Friday Night Fights".

[H2O Man]

27. Right.

My great uncle served as a sparring partner to two men who held the heavyweight title. The problem was this was when they were preparing to fight the great Joe Louis. After he retired from the ring, he started promoting fights, including with Carmen Basilio, who became a family friend for generations.

The first fight I watched with my father & brothers was Rubin Carter knocking out Emile Griffith on 12-23-1963. A few years later, Rubin was arrested, then tried and convicted. And a few years after that, as a dumb teen who had been featured a couple times in boxing magazines, I looked into his case. I thought he was innocent, so I wrote to him, saying I was going to get him released. (Did I mention I was a dumb teen? Ha!) And I offered to let him train and manage me.

It was the start of a 40+ year friendship. But, as it turned out, Rubin thought boxing was exactly as brutal and corrupt as my uncles.

[moniss]

28. Some of the greatest fights

from the standpoint of heart are the Golden Gloves and Chicago Park District Boxing. Young guys maybe in their first couple of fights giving it everything they have and their pals right there to cheer them on. Great stuff. I remember going to the Eagles Club in Milwaukee on a weeknight to see them. Great referee I saw in one fight. Two young kids headgear and big gloves but still a punch is a punch. One kid hit the other with a hard right to the head and the ref immediately saw the kid was gone but just hadn't fallen. He jumped in before another blow could land and wrapped his arms around the kid to keep him from falling. Great ref to be so on top of things. The kid regained himself a little and his corner came to walk him back and both those kids and the ref got a huge round of applause. Too many refs today let things go too far.

[malthaussen]

30. H2O man had a fight or two in the Gold Gloves.

He knows a bit about the ring.

-- Mal

[rubbersole]

8. It's beginning to look like the only thing that can galvanize opposition to the oligarchs...

...is some kind of catastrophic event that becomes impossible to ignore.
To steal from PNAC - "A Pearl Harbor type event"...but probably much worse. Self absorbed capitalists have to be damaged financially. Just sayin'.

[H2O Man]

15. What bothers me

is knowing that you are right about this. And it can't be a slow-moving catastrophe-in-the-making, or else more people would be very concerned about the environment and climate change. We've recently seen that the maga cult views government response to a major hurricane in the context of conspiracy theory.

I can say without any chance of being wrong that many of the opulently wealthy in this county -- indeed, globally -- are aware that climate change is real, and it is here, now. They are investing in what they think will maintain them in relative comfort, while they lie to the public, saying it is a hoax.

[Woodycall]

10. I've been waiting for this kind of realization...

...for a long, long time now and lately, I feel I am beginning to see a new understanding of just what we are dealing with come into sharper focus across a wider swath of the population. This is what I wrote a year ago on RawStory (with minor edits):

The Republican Party is nothing more than an organized crime syndicate. I came to that conclusion a number of years ago. In fact, any "brand" of authoritarian government is basically organized crime at a national level. We dwell a lot on the carnage of WWII and focus on the death camps and atrocities committed against the civilians and captured enemy combatants but what was really going on was a wave of theft supported by the wealthy elite and industrialists. They stole land, real estate, artworks, and even relatively minor personal belongings. Working people to death in slave labor camps was merely an extreme example of wage theft and after they murdered them (or worked them to death), they even stole the gold in their mouths and shaved their hair off to make padding for seats in military vehicles. But in the final analysis, the objective was theft. Just like now. Carnage and destruction were just means to that end. We see the beginnings of it here and now. We saw the end-game there and then.

[H2O Man]

16. Outstanding!

Thank you very much for this! So very well said!

On Friday, I was talking with my sister. We are both old, and so we talked about the Thanksgivings of our past. We would gather with the extended family on our maternal side, at our grandparents' house. Our grandfather was a WW2 hero who fought in the south Pacific. My sister said she question if America today could win such a tough fight? I said that we darned well better be able to, because we are fighting an updated, domestic version of the same nature.

[Woodycall]

24. Thank you.

I've been formulating this for quite a while now. I have for years watched and read a tremendous amount of history and history related content. After a while, I couldn't help but see the striking similarities in the motives, goals, organizational structure of governments and movements (including "religious" movements) that were under the control of something other than the democratic will of the people (at least at some level). Be it led by a pharaoh, emperor, king, dictator, president, pope, ayatollah, or even those led by the likes of Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great, et.al., the pattern is always the same it seems. At its least it involves seizing control of a population (maybe a neighborhood in the case of the mob all the way up to a nation like Germany or Italy) and using muscle to extract wealth. At its greatest, it involves that plus, invading neighboring countries to steal their wealth and enslave their people (in one form or another). They all proclaim some noble objective or "ideology" but under closer examination, it becomes pretty obvious that those "noble objectives and ideologies" were in fact, just a smoke-screen for their crimes. In the case of Al Capone, he had Chicago so sewed-up with bought-off judges, prosecutors, and cops, and threats and actual acts of violence, that it could never have "righted" itself on its own. It took the federal government to break his unholy grip. In the case of Germany, Italy, and Japan, it took the physical force of the allies. Hell, even in "Jolly Ol' " England, the King was the "Boss", the lords, dukes, and earls were the "under-bosses", and the "nights in shining armor" we now know were more akin to hired thugs. Mercenaries working for their cut. And everybody "kicked-up" to the "Boss"... Sure, there have been a few "good kings" but the more one digs, the more it is discovered that they weren't really very "good" after all.

I hate to use this word, because it was so overused 20-30 years ago, but we need a "paradigm shift" in how we deal with that which has taken so many names in the past (and present) but is really the same old thing over and over again...

...Organized Crime.


Once I used to join in
Every boy and girl was my friend
Now there's revolution, but they don't know
What they're fighting

~ Ian Anderson ~

[malthaussen]

31. But it's not the same.

A few heroic spasms when the bullets are flying and you're scared out of your gourd is very different from the slow, gradual erosion that we've been experiencing approximately since Dick Nixon took office and the reactionaries decided that the 60s had gone too far. In a war of bombs and bullets, the US has stacked the deck in their favor by supporting a military with more firepower than the rest of the world -- combined. But we're being nibbled to death by ducks -- by a coterie of disloyal Rugged Individualists who revel in the suffering of others and would gladly see the whole country -- the whole world -- burn to ash rather than create a community. They probably are stupid enough to think they'd survive, because it's hard to believe they're so stupid they don't believe it will happen. It's amazing to me that all the 2nd-amendment gun-humpers who brag about how they would fight oppression not only submit to it, but encourage it, through their votes and actions. How, I wonder, can they possibly be so blind as to not see the true cause of their pain -- even when it is waved in front of their faces. Hell, DJT routinely insulted them all through the last campaign, and they cheered him to the echo.

-- Mal

[Woodycall]

33. You're still not seeing the forest

True, but they were targeted for their stupidity and harvested for their votes by the very people who shipped their jobs to 3rd world countries. It was an evil, but brilliant plan. It was modeled on the evangelical "Christian" grifters and perfected by Madison Avenue and "hired gun" behavioral scientist consultants.

And before them were the European fascists backed by monied interests, here and abroad. Remember, Hitler and his Nazis didn't take their absurd arguments (which many, if not most, understood were absurd) to the universities and libraries where they would be ridiculed and laughed at. They instead took them to the streets and beer halls where they knew that they would find fertile ground among the uneducated and "dull". But there is one thing that the 20th century fascists and the modern republicans both knew/know well and that is: In a democracy, votes are "fungible". A vote from an uneducated "useful idiot" counts just as much as a vote from the most intelligent and informed person in the country. And those "idiot" votes allow them to seize power and steal the wealth of the nation. It's really not much more complicated than that if you "boil it down" to its essence...

[Easterncedar]

37. True. Very true.

We need to keep our eyes on that. But it’s been so disheartening to see our judiciary fail time after time to impose any accountability. The massive grifting from the first orange admin was waved off, with no consequences for any of it. So how do we retake the judicial system?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

11. Federal judiciary -- trained by Koch

To put the success into perspective, MacLean points to the fact that Henry Manne, whom Buchanan was instrumental in hiring, created legal programs for law professors and federal judges which could boast that by 1990 two of every five sitting federal judges had participated. “40 percent of the U.S. federal judiciary,” writes MacLean, “had been treated to a Koch-backed curriculum.”

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america

[H2O Man]

18. Terrible.

In decades past, there were conservative judges that were absolutely focused on upholding the Constitution. There were cases of it when there were actually advantages of cases being heard by conservative judges. (This past summer, a temporary visitor to DU attempted to start shit with me for saying that a degree of paranoia is helpful for investigators. This concept was too complicated for him. But life is often complicated.)

What we see today in the generation of Koch judges is not conservatism ...... it is a radical, often anti-constitutional theology. The overturning of Roe is the most obvious example, as it is deeply rooted in those justices' religious beliefs. And that, of course, is extremely dangerous to a just society.

[malaise]

21. This will be a full blown kakistocracy

Of that I am sure

[H2O Man]

22. Yep!

[ProfessorGAC]

23. Recommended

Excellent essay.

[H2O Man]

26. Thank you!

[Easterncedar]

36. This is a great discussion you all have engaged in here

I have learned a lot. Thanks to you, H2O Man, for educating and engaging this community. I do believe it is what we need now.

I grew up in mob-infested western New York, and was swapping stories about it with family this past week. Too many stories.

We had watched, based on an NPR critic’s recommendation for happy holiday viewing, Gene Kelly’s unsuccessful and largely forgotten movie “It’s Always Fair Weather”. What an odd suggestion, really. Great dance numbers, but the central theme is of the corruption of the young dreams of returned WW II vets. The one who once planned to be a crusading lawyer becomes a lonely grifter, comes to “own” a boxer and eventually, only because he has to, stands up to the mob that runs the fighting scene; the aspiring artist becomes a sad broken shill for crass advertising, which is vividly portrayed with some really ugly episodes of greed and venality, played for laughs that can’t disguise the underlying horror of it. It’s a curiously grim and sour vision of post-war America, in the 1950s so celebrated as a golden age of optimism and prosperity.

Anyway, now it seems to me that organized crime is viewed by the American public as an artifact of the past, a safe subject suitable for entertainment, something to worry about only in the context of Mexican cartels. It is here and all around us now.

I never could watch The Sopranos.

[H2O Man]

40. One of my cousins

lives in Apalachin, NY, a town famous for a 1957 mob meeting at 625 McFall Road. I always remember that when I visit him. He used to assist me in corner work when my son boxed in the state Golden Gloves in Buffalo a few years ago. The promoter there was the most honest and decent that I've encountered, but there is still corruption that includes the amateurs and professional boxing. I suppose it is because while the sport isn't as popular nationally as it once was, it makes more money than any other. That kid Jake Paul just made $40 million against a 58-year old Mike Tyson (who trained on "weed and mushroom&quot . Paul wouldn't last a round against my son.

I never watched The Sopranos. Partly because I don't tend to watch or read fiction. I've never watched a "Rocky" movie, either. The only exception in recent times was season one of True Detective.

[Kid Berwyn]

39. The Rot Is Deep and It Goes Way Back

An example from DU 2006:

Know your BFEE: Neil Bush hangs out with Russian Mafiya Godfather

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2082945

Most importantly: Great essay, H2O Man. Our Constitution is the greatest idea for organizing a nation ever put to paper. The only way it can survive is if We the People understand and remember that.

[H2O Man]

41. Thank you!

As you know -- and you know! -- one can trace the Bush family back for generations and find corruption.

I agree regarding the Constitution. Imperfect men created a near-perfect document, that has been expanded upon. I've long been fascinated with the Franklin Plan of Union and the Articles of Confederation evolving into the Constitution.

[Kid Berwyn]

42. Ben was talking Revolution back in '54.

1754.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-22-02-0069

We could use a lot of that Yankee wisdom today, as a government of integrity prepares to pass the reigns of power to an madministration led by an agent of Vladimir Putin.



In the Oval Office in the merry month of May 2017

President Trump gestures to Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, as he speaks to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (Alexander Shcherbak/TASS/Getty Images)



“I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job," Trump said, according to The Times. "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off.” He added, "I'm not under investigation."

Sources:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/10/527755991/trump-meets-with-russias-lavrov-at-the-white-house-today

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nut-job-james-comey-russia-2017-5

Long live Yankee Freedom! And Dixie and its neo-NAZI KKK chums can fuck right off.

[H2O Man]

43. Ben spent a lot

of time with the Iroquois chiefs. I don't know how many "greats," but one of Chief Waterman's grandfather met with him in Albany. It's funny that they hand these stories down, while our culture has largely forgotten them.