Last Call For Another Post-Racial America Update

We're all fine here in post-racial America, everything's okay, after all racism died off with the Boomers or something and we certainly don't have to worry about Millennials acting like th....

A white student at East Tennessee State University was arrested and charged with civil rights intimidation on Wednesday after showing up to a campus Black Lives Matter protest wearing a gorilla mask and handing out bananas to African American students.

Tristan Rettke, a freshman at the university, also carried a rope and a burlap sack painted with the Confederate flag and a marijuana leaf, according to WCYB. 

Rettke was first detained by campus police, then arrested and taken to Washington County Detention Center after discussion with public safety supervisors, campus administration and the District Attorney General’s office, WCYB reported. 

According to a Johnson City Police Department report obtained by WJHL, Rettke told officers he purchased the rope, bananas and gorilla mask on Tuesday after learning about the Black Lives Matter event on social media app Yik Yak. He then went to Wednesday’s protest “in an attempt to provoke the protesters,” the report noted.

Oh wait a minute, why should anyone be surprised after 400 years that we still have racist douchebags as America's true sustainable resource?

Racism didn't end, it's just getting on record here in the age of social media and instant news events.

Shutdown Countdown, Con't

Looks like House Republicans aren't anywhere near as stupid as I suspected they would be and have approved funding for combating the Zika virus and helping Flint as the Democrats win the day over Paul Ryan once again.

The House on Wednesday approved a bill to fund the federal government through December 9, averting a costly shutdown two days ahead of the deadline. 

The 10-week bill, which passed comfortably 342 to 85, now heads to the president’s desk and sends lawmakers back to their district early for campaigning. 

A majority of the Republican conference backed the bill, with just 75 Republicans opposing it. Ten Democrats voted against the bill.

Lawmakers agreed to keep federal agencies running through Dec. 9, while also funding a $1.1 billion emergency aid package to halt the spread of the Zika virus. Flood-stricken regions in Louisiana, West Virginia and Maryland will also receive a half-billion dollars. 

The months-long marathon to fund the government turned into a sprint Wednesday as lawmakers raced toward the exits. The pre-election adjournment comes just a few weeks after Congress was out of session for a two-month summer recess. 

The Wednesday evening vote caps a dramatic 24 hours of deal-making led by House SpeakerPaul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Both chambers signed off on the stopgap spending bill, just one day after the same bill was soundly rejected in the Senate. 

The bill collapsed in the upper chamber on Tuesday mostly due to Democrats’ gripes about Republicans leaving out money to deal with lead contamination in Flint, Michigan while agreeing to fund flood relief in other states. 

The dispute over Flint funding was swiftly – and quietly – resolved late Tuesday evening by Ryan and Pelosi, who huddled twice to work out an agreement. 

House GOP leaders agreed to waive a budget rule to put $170 million for Flint in a separate water resources bill in exchange for Democratic support to clear the continuing resolution.

A bipartisan amendment authorizing the Flint aid sailed through the House Wednesday afternoon on a 284-141 vote.

So now the House bill will go back to the Senate and we're not out of the woods yet,  It's still possible that Mitch and company could sink this bill again, or that Ted Cruz could step in and wreck the whole deal.

We'll see.  Less than 48 hours now.

The Orange And The Red

Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald continues to chase down Donald Trump's sordid financial past dealings and this week we discover that America's newest hero of trade protectionist policies and capitalist freedom violated the US embargo on Cuba in the late 90's to deal with the Castro brothers.

A company controlled by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, secretly conducted business in communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings.

Documents show that the Trump company spent a minimum of $68,000 for its 1998 foray into Cuba at a time when the corporate expenditure of even a penny in the Caribbean country was prohibited without U.S. government approval. But the company did not spend the money directly. Instead, with Trump’s knowledge, executives funneled the cash for the Cuba trip through an American consulting firm called Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corporation. Once the business consultants traveled to the island and incurred the expenses for the venture, Seven Arrows instructed senior officers with Trump’s company—then called Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts—how to make it appear legal by linking it after-the-fact to a charitable effort.

The payment by Trump Hotels came just before the New York business mogul launched his first bid for the White House, seeking the nomination of the Reform Party. On his first day of the campaign, he traveled to Miami where he spoke to a group of Cuban-Americans, a critical voting bloc in the swing state. Trump vowed to maintain the embargo and never spend his or his companies’ money in Cuba until Fidel Castro was removed from power.

He did not disclose that, seven months earlier, Trump Hotels already had reimbursed its consultants for the money they spent on their secret business trip to Havana.

At the time, Americans traveling to Cuba had to receive specific U.S. government permission, which was only granted for an extremely limited number of purposes, such as humanitarian efforts. Neither an American nor a company based in the United States could spend any cash in Cuba; instead a foreign charity or similar sponsoring entity needed to pay all expenses, including travel. Without obtaining a license from the federal Office of Foreign Asset Control before the consultants went to Cuba, the undertaking by Trump Hotels would have been in violation of federal law, trade experts say.

Officials with the Trump campaign and the Trump Organization did not respond to emails seeking comment on the Cuba trip, further documentation about the endeavor or an interview with Trump. Richard Fields, who was then the principal in charge of Seven Arrows, did not return calls seeking comment.

But a former Trump executive who spoke on condition of anonymity said the company did not obtain a government license prior to the trip. Internal documents show that executives involved in the Cuba project were still discussing the need for federal approval after the trip had taken place.

OFAC officials say there is no record that the agency granted any such license to the companies or individuals involved, although they cautioned that some documents from that time have been destroyed. Yet one OFAC official, who agreed to discuss approval procedures if granted anonymity, said the probability that the office would grant a license for work on behalf of an American casino was “essentially zero.”

Oops.

In other words, Double-Dealing Donald broke the law, big time, sending a team of consultants to scout out Havana as casino territory while screaming he would never spend a dime in Castro's Communist Cuba. I bet South Florida Republicans are going to be really happy with this news, especially since Trump launched his initial 2000 third-party presidential bid in Miami as Bill Clinton was taking the first steps to try to loosen the embargo.

He wanted in on Cuba cash 16 years before Obama made it cool, and in the end he lied to try to make it look like a charity operation to hide his true intent of looking for a way to open a casino with international partners.

Seems like Trump has a seriously long history of using charities as fronts for his scams.  No wonder Republicans have been attacking the Clinton Foundation since Trump got into the race.

We'll see how this plays nationally but I'm betting this story is going to get noticed "bigly" where it will hurt Trump the most: Florida's poll numbers.

StupidiNews!

• Two Pakistani soldiers were killed in a firefight with Indian troops in the disputed Kashmir border region, India insists it was stopping terrorist attacks, Pakistan calls the incident "naked aggression".
• Congress has overwhelmingly voted to override President Obama's veto of legislation allowing US 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act now becomes law.
• The Pentagon is considering tougher options for dealing with Russia's continued assault on the Syrian city of Aleppo as a US-Russian brokered cease fire ended two weeks ago.
• Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf faces another round of grilling on Capitol Hill as fallout from the bank fraudulently opening millions of accounts to charge consumers continues.
• Tens of thousands of internet security cameras have been compromised by hackers, forming a botnet of considerable power to launch the largest coordinated denial of service attacks ever seen.