As brought to you by…
This is the crazy shit I have ever seen a presidential candidate do in the middle of a campaign. pic.twitter.com/yibrxcuXnW
— Christopher Bouzy (spoutible.com/cbouzy) (@cbouzy) August 27, 2024
Save y’all a click (although it is a most *amazing* piece of grifter art): For a mere $99, you can buy an Official Trump Digital Trading Card AMERICA FIRST Edition (Series 1 & 2 Sold Out in Hours), and receive… an NFT. Yes, a (really ugly) digital image of The Felon Himself, styled like those Jesus / Elvis icons your grandmother may’ve displayed.
Buy 75 of these cloud-borne trading stamps — that would be $7,425, credit card or crypto — and you get Dinner with the President at his Private Country Club & A Piece of the Actual Suit from his famous debate!
And unlike so many Trump enterprises, it’s all legal!!!*
*(barring future court decisions)
R-Jud
That’s one Pokemon my kid would not be interested in collecting. Probably doesn’t even have an evolved form.
Birdie
Where’s the free set of steak knives? How cheap and tawdry this all is, and yet half the voting population wants this as President.
My version of “woke” is realising just how dumb and venal so many people are. I used to assume decency. Now I don’t and I think it’s made me a worse person.
John Revolta
Don’t forget the best part!
(emphasis, and LOLs, mine)
R-Jud
@Birdie:
Between Trump and the pandemic, I now assume most people I meet are secret conspiracy freaks and/or racists until proven otherwise. I also feel like this has made me a meaner, more suspicious person, and I hate it.
TS
I lasted 5 seconds on the video.
On another topic, I think Betty C mentioned the plan by DeSantis to build high rise all over many of the Florida Parks. I read this article on the whistleblower
There is a link in the article to a gofundme for Mr Gaddis. I was so pleased to note, the fundraiser was for $10,000 and so far has raised $148,098 from 3.7K donations
K-Mo
Touring the mid-sized towns of the South.
Selling a bunch of tacky icons.
We are firmly in the Fat Elvis period.
lowtechcyclist
@TS:
I’m glad to see Gaddis’ GoFundMe jar is overflowing, and I hope he’s got grounds to sue DeSantis’ ass off!
Duane
How much for a piece of his ear?
John Revolta
@TS: Isn’t firing a whistleblower a crime? Probably not in Florida I suppose, not anymore anyway, but a federal crime?
TS
@John Revolta:
They work ways around it – where I live (not US) many of the government workers these days have to sign contracts saying they will not speak to the press!
We don’t have “a first amendment”
Baud
@John Revolta:
Fixed.
lowtechcyclist
@John Revolta:
Here’s the Florida whistleblower protection statute. It’s kinda dense reading and IANAL, so whether they give Gaddis grounds to sue is something I won’t even try to speculate about. But at least Florida still has a whistleblower protection statute.
The statute protects employees of the state of Florida, not workers in general. The Federal whistleblower statutes probably are analogous, protecting Federal employees against retaliation, but not protecting workers in general.
Baud
Via reddit, I’m not sure when this interview was, but Trump is exhibiting real alpha male energy right here.
Shalimar
@Baud: “Not limited to” basically means Trump can cancel because the election is over and he would rather play golf than waste time with a nobody. The winner has no recourse.
Baud
@Shalimar:
In complete fairness, I doubt that clause is unique to Trump. While someone Ike Harris would take a dinner giveaway seriously, she’s not going to expose herself to liability if something comes up that prevents her from attending.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
There are federal whistleblower statutes for particular industries, like finance.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
If it’s recent, it makes me wonder if he’s been taking weight-loss drugs (like Ozempic or something similar). His face doesn’t have its usual shape.
Jay
Like many things, it will come out in court or arbitration.
It’s not a fast process.
I was illegally fired. Took almost two years to reach a settlement. Minimum wage employee vs. $430 billion dollar Corp.
They settled just before going to court.
Get to talk about it because I refused the NDA. Fuck em.
Gvg
I thought this post was going to be about his sentencing hearing. Isn’t that coming up soon? Also he has been breaking the terms of his bond IMO. I want him to find out. I want his cultists to see him find out, and hear “ no, that’s just how everyone is supposed to be treated under the law. The same law for everyone”
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
This isn’t a giveaway, though, and I’d expect that to make a difference. If I’m a celeb and I give away a dinner to one lucky fan, they’re not out any money if for some reason things fall through.
This, OTOH, is really buying a dinner with Trump for $7425. Yeah, I know, the buyer still gets the NFTs, but c’mon, man, they’re worthless. So the buyer is out some serious money if Trump can’t honor the dinner invite, and should at least get a refund. And IIRC, the NFTs can be un-NFT’ed, so the status quo ante could be fully restored.
(AIUI, the digital image you get isn’t what’s (supposedly) worth something, since after all it can be copied ad infinitum, it’s some special coding linked to it that gives an NFT its alleged value. And why are we in a timeline where we’re even having this conversation?!)
mrmoshpotato
@Birdie:
Sounds like me in 2020 realizing how many adults are whiny brats (about mask-wearing).
It doesn’t.
mrmoshpotato
Yes and yes!
Ken
@lowtechcyclist: Right, owning an NFT means that there’s a record in a database* that says you own an NFT. It has no other existence, and its value is only what someone might pay you to add a record to the database* saying that they own it now — which is one of the reasons the vast majority of NFTs are well underwater or valueless.
* The database is called “the blockchain”, but it’s just an append-only database. It’s usually implemented with a (very slow) distributed protocol, which is useful when you don’t trust anyone else** but want the whole world to be able to read your financial records. (Note that many of the users don’t actually want this, because they are criminals, so there’s a lot of use of anonymizing services.)
** Somewhere on youtube there’s a talk, I think by Paul Krugman, where he discussed how the financial system developed this thing called “trust” precisely so they could avoid the frictions otherwise required in transactions.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@John Revolta: There are whistleblower protection laws but the whistleblower often still gets fired or indefinitely suspended. I had a friend who went through it at the federal level. She sued and eventually won…if that happens you get back any back pay, have all your legal costs reimbursed get reinstated at what would have been your seniority level assuming you hadn’t been sidelined, and there are financial penalties on top of that for the Agency that wrongfully punished the whistleblower. I don’t think any individual is ever held criminally responsible for firing a whistleblower though. So as a general rule firing whistleblowers still happens because the whole process is expensive for the whistleblower and takes a long time and you lose you’re broke from legal fees. The Agency knows this so will often take their chances.
kalakal
@TS: The story was a slow motion train wreck. The plan was sekret then the papers published details on a friday and the state rapidly announced ‘public meetings’ for the following Tuesday afternoon, one for each park, 1 hr, with 48 hours to put in written objections. By Tuesday DeStupid was back peddling so fast his boots were in danger of flying off, the plan was put on hold and everything was the fault of ‘the liberal media’
Geminid
@TS: I hope some journalist and/or public interest group does a deep dive into the details of this proposal, and identifies the private entities in line to profit from.it. To me, it sounds like an action plan and not just a proposal. It was in many real aspects a privatization plan, and I suspect the contracts were drawn up and ready to sign.
Baud
Via reddit
Baud
@TS:
That’s why Project 2025 wants to get rid of the civil service.
BellyCat
The untold tale for many Whistleblowers is that future employment prospects are often very slim.
Steve LaBonne
@R-Jud: This is a big reason why I go to (UU) church almost every Sunday (and sing in the choir and serve on a committee). Regularly spending time in a community of good people who want to make the world a better place helps to keep my outlook from souring.
stinger
@lowtechcyclist: Ah, but you see, your $7425 isn’t really buying you a dinner with Tub-a-Lardo. It’s buying you a quarter-inch by one-and-a-quarter-inch scrap of cloth. Like radio pastors
sellinggiving to the faithful in return for a donation tiny “handkerchiefs” that have “been to the Holy Land”.It is a cult.
jonas
@John Revolta: That’s hilarious. *Of course* these people will never be allowed within a country mile of Dear Leader. He hates them and thinks they’re disgusting.
gene108
I vaguely remember when a President or presidential candidate was supposed to avoid conflicts of interest and the media would make a big deal out of it.
TS
@Baud:
Fairness is not a word that the weird old guy would use, understand or follow, so no point in mentioning it.
That someone thinks a limited edition Trump NFT in lieu thereof has any value is another determination that the marks do not understand they are marks.
The Thin Black Duke
Fool. Money. Parted. Repeat.
Baud
@gene108:
I can’t remember the last time a Republican president or candidate was held to that standard by the media.
catclub
ALMOST half. he has never gotten up to 50%
Ken
@The Thin Black Duke: But spare a thought for the proprietors of the Trump stores, who are stuck with bins full of unsellable anti-Biden merchandise and praying that the Chinese factories can get the anti-Harris stuff to them soon, so they can continue parting money from fools.
And that thought should be “HAW-HAW” in your best Nelson Muntz voice.
catclub
Actually he uses it a lot. To him it always refers to normal treatment of him that he calls unfair. e.g the court system.
BellyCat
@catclub: The court *has* treated Trump unfairly. Nobody else would be given the number of breaks that he has been given.
Gin & Tonic
russian missile hit a block away from my cousin’s house overnight. Everyone alive, but obviously shaken. It is a purely residential area.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Damn. Glad their OK at least.
gene108
@Ken:
I seriously doubt these “NFT’s” Trump’s selling are recorded anywhere, let alone Trump spending the money for IT people to record it using blockchain.
Probably just a digital image he’s selling for a quick buck.
Scout211
Poor Trump family. Bless their hearts.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Pure evil.
Ken
@Scout211: That family has the worst luck with their crypto project security.
lowtechcyclist
@Gin & Tonic:
Glad nobody was killed (and hopefully nobody seriously hurt) by this latest attack.
Damned if I know why the world is treating Russia as anything other than an outlaw nation. Every night, every day, it commits a new round of war crimes against the Ukrainian people.
Geminid
@Ken: There’s one of those Trump stores in Farmville, Virginia. It’s one the whose proprietor Rep. Good out of. He’d shown up to campaign an hour before an event she had scheduled for his opponent John McGuire. Personally, I’d have thrown Good out just because he’s such a creepy asshole.
Anyway, I was wondering what they were going to do with the store in the likely event Trump loses in November, and it occurred to me they could make it into a Trump museum. Farmville is just 20 miles down the road from Appomattox, and there could some synergy here.
artem1s
this is flat out campaign finance and tax fraud. the thing about NFT’s is you kind of have to have crypto to buy and “store” them (if they are actually NFTs and not just jpegs). TCF’s campaign already accepts crypto. Felon Musk is probably helping them run a pump and dump. Everything the TCF is doing (and more importantly NOT doing) is pointing towards someone who is prepping to flee the country. it’s just a matter of time.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Scout211: ROFL, the scammers are scamming the scammers.
My bet: Target: Don Jr. Method: spear fishing, with discount cocaine offer email.
Scout211
New from ProPublica this morning:
. . .
Much more at the link, including Shackleford’s long history of conservative religious litigation.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That will be quite the day when Trump flees to Puerto Rico and claims sanctuary from the US government.
Snark aside, I can see Trump doing this even if he wins, flees to another country claiming to be a president in exile. That way he can be treated as a president without having to do the work of being president.
Gin & Tonic
@lowtechcyclist: Plenty of people killed. Just not my cousin or her family. I may have been unclear.
artem1s
@Ken:
or is it not secure by design?
stinger
@Gin & Tonic: Unspeakable. So glad your family survived.
TS
@catclub:
“unfair” – he doesn’t know fair – to him every last thing is “unfair”
Mousebumples
I’d argue it probably has a devolved form though…
Frequent_lurker
@Scout211: Some of this activity being done in order to avoid the supreme court having to follow enforceable ethics rules.
I think the real reason they’re angry with Kagan is because she goes really out of her way to be the most ethical by reporting at least most of her gifts.
karen marie
@R-Jud: I just assume they’re fucking stupid. I am not interested in their individual kink.
karen marie
@lowtechcyclist: Aren’t NFTs just jpegs with a price tag?
karen marie
@Scout211: That is delicious. My blackened soul is cheered!