"Reveal Thou the Total Truth. Save us pitiful earthly peeps from all the skanky, stanky KGOP republican perfidy, deceit, abomination, collusion, theft, treason, and all the other evil shit they are pumping into the Mundi."

Sincerely, Yr. 'umble petitioner

I love your posts

You're too kind Malaise


Happy New Year.

Happy New Year to you and yours

Wonder what your version would look like in Latin.

At least with Google Translate:

Summa est veritas es revelare. Miserandam terrenis omnibus salvare peeps skanky, popularem stanky KGOP perfidiae dolos abominationem collusionem furto insidiarum et stercore quod malis in elit mundi.

the article to the end to grasp the extent of his efforts to defraud the US and receive voters.

On one hand it makes perfect sense and, if true, is provable in a court of law.
On the other, it makes me feel like a loony conspiracy theorist.

Enormous amounts of money are at stake, along with the power to keep sucking it in.

This whole story is getting more and more complex all the time. The last two years has been like one long mini series.

with all this crap in it, it would never be published. Too improbable. Too over the top.

It would probably be longer than Game of Thrones. Just imagine how much we still don't know.

I wouldn't be able to get past the first chapter or two. Much too absurd even for fiction.

Wow!

First I can't remember where I put my coffee.

Then I can't find my phone.

Then I misplace my $450 million painting.

Getting old sucks.

Can't wait to see how this plays out...and where in the hell is that painting?

and all of the other methods and so forth via buying 'clean assets' w/ dirty money, etc. is almost like a comedy sketch, but one that isn't funny. If this describes the act of just a few wealthy people to escape taxation/escape having their money traced/tracked, etc. responsibility (rump, Saudi Arabia, Russia), then think of this scary scenario, that many wealthy people/entities have engaged in this practice multiple times, year after year.

This practice among w/ others is what rump seems to claim in his so called ability to avoid paying taxes and I think this is the big reason why he doesn't want to show us his tax returns. This is not a privacy issue, this is a criminal issue and it needs to be acted upon.

These schemes are ripping ALL of us off big time. I love to know the excuses that republicans will use in order to deflect or defeat efforts to continue to defund the IRS. If anything, the new House of Representatives should pass beefed up tax collection efforts (or at least the states should) to go after these people/entities. If the Senate votes no on this issue, I'd love to hear their rationale as to why, and then thrown them in jail after due process, for failing to perform their basic duty to the US and their oaths.

Remember the Panama Papers? It detailed numerous accounts of offshore LLPs setup solely for the purposes of tax avoidance. I know that (or least I think we do) that the IRS has in place a system of awards should someone/some group id tax avoidance schemes be identified to the IRS and tax revenues recovered.

This needs to be beefed up in serious terms, w/ severe tax penalties being imposed (seize estates if need be (this already happens w/ drug dealers today)), awards being massively increased and the authorities of independent entities increased so they can all go after these crooks instead of just the IRS.

To protect ourselves, thresholds be established so abuses won't occur during the execution of this new or enhanced process, such as estates over $100 Million dollars or more are subject to this kind of collection effort.
Once setup, a competent group of international tax lawyers, forensic accountants (all common US citizens) could work for our government (and us thus), and scoring a commission on recovered tax revenues. We all would win.

I had a chance to buy that thing at a garage sale two weeks ago for $60 but the guy refused to throw in the frame. Man, it would have looked so good in my storage unit.

From The Washington Post in Dec 2017:

--- snip ---

New York-based art collector and da Vinci expert Robert Simon and art dealer Alexander Parish found the painting in Louisiana in 2005 and purchased it for $10,000.

It then underwent a six-year restoration and verification process.

In 2013, a consortium of dealers including Simon, Parish and Warren Adelson sold “Salvator Mundi” for $80 million to a company owned by a Swiss businessman and art dealer Yves Bouvier, Bloomberg reported. Bouvier, in turn, sold it to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $127.5 million in 2014.

Rybolovlev owned the painting until Nov. 15, when Prince Bader made it the world’s most expensive painting by shelling out $450,312,500 for it.

--- snip ---

Rybolovlev bought trump's Florida property in 2008 for $95 million, overpaying by tens of millions of dollars. Just as MBS and/or Abu Dhabi bought the painting for probably $200 million more than they should have.

Money laundering anyone?

There you have it. Ours is indeed a humorous God.

Fascinating, frightening and infuriating.

Apropos of nothing, the story in the link mentioned Rybolovlev’s Monaco penthouse, La Belle Époque. The only other time I’d read about a Monaco penthouse was when stories about the mysterious fiery death of Edmund Safra were in the news. After visiting just a few sites, I found the Rybolovlev penthouse and the Safra penthouse are one and the same. And, for the cherry on top, Safra was a partner of Bill Browder.

Damned tangled web.

things that make you go hmmmmmmm!

It's also not being reported on in the more reputable and usually accurate, well-informed sources tracking the Mueller investigation.

While money-laundering in the art world is a well-known phenomenon and the story so far on Salvador Mundi in particular is all kinds of weird, I'd hesitate to connect the two until there's a bit more information from generally reliable sources.

skeptically,
Bright

n/t

I mean, it may have existed previously, but if you were going to launder money wouldn't it make sense for someone to find this long lost painting and then someone overpay for it by hundreds of millions of dollars, and then it just disappear???

NOTHING about this story adds up, but the media just goes along with it all because they love the sensationalism of the whole thing.

I have bought many copies ... just give it away... should be required reading

And ... I am excited for you to read this book ....

Well written and ... wow ... the information is incredible

👍🏼

This global criminal conspiracy is too big and complex for the general public to grasp from the tiny snatches of information conveyed between commercials on television. If the House waits until there is public consensus for impeachment, the criminals will succeed -- game over.