7 charities so far have bailed on Mar-a-Lago.

Courtesy of The Hill:

Another charity has canceled an event planned at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, marking the seventh group to scrap fundraising events at the luxury Palm beach, Fla., club. 

The Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach said on Facebook Saturday that it had pulled its annual dinner dance from Trump’s Palm Beach estate. 

“Given the current environment surrounding Mar-a-Lago, we have made the decision to move our annual dinner dance,” the group wrote. 

The local nonprofit is “dedicated to protecting and celebrating the unique architectural and cultural heritage of Palm Beach,” the organization said in the statement. 

The local charity follows other major nonprofits such as The American Friends of Magen David, the American Cancer Society and the Cleveland Clinic in pulling out from the location. 

The groups’ announcements all come as Trump faces massive backlash for saying “both sides” were to blame for violence at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

The thing that Trump cares the most about is his businesses.

I have to imagine that once Trump realizes that his stint in the White House is forever damaging his brand and his ability to make money that he will seriously consider trying to find some way to get the hell out.

Which by the way is the same prediction that Trump's ghostwriter on the "Art of the Deal" came up with as well: 

"The circle is closing at blinding speed," Tony Schwartz, who CNN reports spent more than a year with Trump writing his 1987 memoir, tweeted August 16. "Trump is going to resign and declare victory before Mueller and congress leave him no choice."

Sadly that still leads us with a President Mike Pence.

But hey, at least the planet will no longer be in danger of exploding. 

Eric Trump on Democrats: “To me, they’re not even people. It’s so, so sad. Morality’s just gone." Really?

Courtesy of The Hill:

President Trump’s son Eric Trump on Tuesday said Democrats are “not even people” to him after their obstruction of his father’s agenda. 

“I’ve never seen hatred like this,” he said on Fox News’s “Hannity” Tuesday night. “To me, they’re not even people. It’s so, so sad. Morality’s just gone, morals have flown out the window and we deserve so much better than this as a country." 

“You see the Democratic Party, they’re imploding. They’re imploding. They became obstructionists because they have no message of their own.” 

Trump additionally criticized the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) leadership without directly naming Chairman Tom Perez. 

“You see the head of the DNC, who is a total whack job,” he told host Sean Hannity. “There’s no leadership there.”

This from the son of the man who made a name for himself, and one can argue based his campaign, on attacking President Obama and questioning his legitimacy to even hold office.

And this hypocrisy comes on the same day that we learn this about Eric Trump and his charities.

Courtesy of the New York Daily News:  

President Trump's son has hosted charity golf tournaments over the past decade and raised money for child cancer research, but some of the proceeds were funneled to the Trump Organization, according to a report published Tuesday. 

The charity events, organized by Eric Trump since 2007 at a Trump-branded golf course, ostensibly raised millions of dollars for St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital. 

Donors contributed more than $500,000 that they believed was being used to help sick children. In fact, their donations were going to other Trump-connected charities, according to Forbes magazine. 

Trump’s practices, if true, would violate federal and state laws on self-dealing and misleading donors.

Stealing money from kids with cancer, and it's Democrats who are not quite human?

Washington Post reporter who Donald Trump once called a "nasty guy" won a Pulitzer Prize yesterday.

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, whom President Donald Trump called a “nasty guy” for doggedly investigating his dubious charity foundation claims, won the Pulitzer Prize on Monday for national reporting. 

Fahrenthold not only pored over documents and called hundreds of organizations while reporting on the president’s charitable foundation during the 2016 campaign, but brought readers real-time social media updates and turned to them for additional tips. 

In October, Fahrenthold also broke the news that Trump boasted about groping women in an unearthed “Access Hollywood” outtake. 

We are seeing a real resurgence of quality journalism in response to Donald Trump, and I predict this is just the first of many prizes that journalists will be winning due to their investigations into Trump, his presidency, and his business dealings.

I bet this news is really burning his ass.

Kind of like when Katie Couric won that Walter Cronkite award for her interviews with Sarah Palin.

Some DC restaurants are donating a portion of the money they make during the inauguration to charities that Donald Trump probably hates.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed: 

More than a dozen high-profile DC restaurants have pledged to donate a portion of their inauguration weekend profits to charity and aid organizations, including Planned Parenthood and an organization benefitting immigrants. 

Sarah Massey of All In Service, the group organizing the inauguration weekend donations said that the 14 restaurants, bars, and cafes currently listed on the website are just the beginning. 

“The team is talking to another dozen businesses right now,” she told BuzzFeed News. “We would love to see the entire DC service industry participate.” 

President-elect Donald Trump vowed during the campaign to defund Planned Parenthood and to deport two-to-three million undocumented immigrants. 

Participating establishments get to pick from five aid organizations, as well as what percentage of their profits from the weekend of Jan. 20 through 22 they plan to donate.

Now THAT is a good idea!

Personally I think that we can send donations even if we are NOT a DC restaurant that will make money from the inauguration.

Besides Planned Parenthood, there is also Thrive DC, which serves homeless people, Mary's Center, which provides health care and social services to the poor, and Ayuda, an organization that supports immigrants in the DC area.

I think I will donate to Planned Parenthood myself.

Just a more positive way to say "Fuck Donald Trump."

New York Attorney General shuts down the Trump Foundation for violating state law.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

The New York attorney general has notified Donald Trump that his charitable foundation is violating state law — by soliciting donations without proper certification — and ordered Trump’s charity to stop its fundraising immediately, the attorney general’s office said Monday. 

James Sheehan, head of the attorney general’s charities bureau, sent the “notice of violation” to the Donald J. Trump Foundation on Friday, according to a copy of the notice provided by the press office of state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D). 

The night before that, The Washington Post reported that Trump’s charity had been soliciting donations from other people without being properly registered in New York state.

You know if all of this were happening to somebody else I would almost feel bad for them.

But it's Donald Trump so let the good times roll.

Gee I wonder if Trump is still glad that he decided to run for President?

John Oliver comparing the scandals of Hillary to Donald Trump's is something you must see before the debate tonight.

My favorite part:

Think of it like this: Ethical failings in a politician are like raisins in a cookie ... They shouldn't be there. They disgust people. But most politicians have at least a few raisins. Hillary arguably has more raisins than average. There's probably 10 of these little fuckers in there … But [Trump] is a fucking raisin monsoon! He is ethically compromised to an almost unprecedented degree. So if you don't like raisins, I get it – they're disgusting. But unfortunately, this November, you're gonna have to swallow 10 or we're all going to be eating this shit for years.

I hate raisins so this was the perfect metaphor.

And that is really it.

Sure Hillary Clinton has done some things which can be interpreted as shady. But when you really examine them, there is really very little or nothing scandalous to be found.

However Donald Trump is so unbelievably corrupt, manipulative,  and full of shit that you become exhausted when reading about his numerous and never ending scandals.

There really is no choice here.

Only one of these people should ever even be considered for a job in politics, especially for the most important political job on the planet.

Donald Trump scandal of the day, using Trump foundation money to illegally settle lawsuits.

No my flagpole is much bigger than this.

Courtesy of the Washington Post: 

Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents. 

Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses. 

In one case, from 2007, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club faced $120,000 in unpaid fines from the town of Palm Beach, Fla., resulting from a dispute over the height of a flagpole. 

In a settlement, Palm Beach agreed to waive those fines — if Trump’s club made a $100,000 donation to a specific charity for veterans. Instead, Trump sent a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity funded almost entirely by other people’s money, according to tax records.

Anybody surprised that Donald Trump was in a dispute over the "length of his flagpole?"

Yeah me neither.

Trump also used Foundation money to settle a lawsuit concerning one of his golf courses, to purchase advertising for his hotels, and also he used $10,000 to buy a portrait of himself.

How "charitable" of him.

All of this is of course completely illegal and if this were a regular guy he would be facing jail time.

Here is how one expert on charities responded to the news: 

“I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen,” said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, who advises charities at the Venable law firm in Washington. After The Washington Post described the details of these Trump Foundation gifts, Tenenbaum described them as “really shocking.” 

“If he’s using other people’s money — run through his foundation — to satisfy his personal obligations, then that’s about as blatant an example of self-dealing [as] I’ve seen in awhile,” Tenenbaum said.

So is this it? Is this the scandal that finally destroys the Donald Trump candidacy? 

Or is this just one more scandal to add to the long list of scandals that have failed to stop this seemingly Teflon coated thug?

Sadly I think we already know the answer.

Donald Trump lied about using $150,000 t0 help small businesses impacted by the attack on 9-11. Well of course he did.

Courtesy of the Independent:  

Presidential candidate Donald Trump allegedly used $150,000 of government funds after 9/11 for cleaning and repair costs rather than helping local small businesses. 

he Republican said several times during the presidential campaign trail that he was awarded the sum for helping others after terrorists took down the Twin Towers in Manhattan, but according to an investigation by the New York Post, he claimed the taxpayers' money for “rent loss”, clean-up and repair costs for his nearby skyscraper on Wall Street. 

The discovery was made through documents obtained from the Empire State Development Corporation, which carried out the recovery program after 9/11. 

Officials told the newspaper that if Mr Trump had asked for the cash to be reimbursed for his charity work with small businesses, the claim would have been rejected. 

“He’s clearly wrong. I saw him say that and he’s obviously wrong,” said David Catalfamo, a senior adviser to former New York City governor George Pataki.

Okay I am having another one of those episodes where I can't figure out if being an unscrupulous bottom feeder taking advantage of a national catastrophe makes Trump more, or less attractive to his base?

Which also makes me wonder how they feel about the fact that he also asked for, and received, donations to his "charity" which he then turned around and donated under his own name: 

Instead, Trump had found a way to give away somebody else’s money and claim the credit for himself. Trump had earlier gone to a charity in New Jersey — the Charles Evans Foundation, named for a deceased businessman — and asked for a donation. 

Trump said he was raising money for the Palm Beach Police Foundation. 

The Evans Foundation said yes. In 2009 and 2010, it gave a total of $150,000 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a small charity that the Republican presidential nominee founded in 1987. 

Then, Trump’s foundation turned around and made donations to the police group in South Florida. In those years, the Trump Foundation’s gifts totaled $150,000. 

Trump had effectively turned the Evans Foundation’s gifts into his own gifts, without adding any money of his own.

In fact all of the money the Trump Foundation has donated since 2008 has been other people's money, and none of it his own.

Not only did he not give any of his own money to the police foundation, but when he received an award for his philanthropy, he rented the space to hold the ceremony to the police foundation for $276,463.

So instead of really giving ANY he actually made over a quarter million dollars and got paid for it.

Oh, and he also used $20,000 of the money donated to the Trump Foundation to buy himself this awesome painting of his favorite subject.

You know I can never take a long or hot enough shower to wash away the slime that seems to cover me after I write about this POS.

Ick!

So please, please, please, please make sure you vote for Hillary Clinton in November.

Sarah Palin uses her Down syndrome child to cover for a heartless attack on poor folks in Maine.

Courtesy of Hypocritical Hattie's Facebook page:  

Get Off Your Butt To Make a Buck 

Good things come from the beautiful state of Maine. (I met the nicest lady visiting Trig's school yesterday for our "Lunch With a Loved One" reading event, all the way up here from Maine to visit grandkids, representing her state so graciously!) Good stuff from the Pine Tree State, including some tough love to restore work ethic.

Well isn't that sweet? Mom came to visit at Trig's school.

Well it would be if she then did not use at an opportunity to link to a Nancy French written post over at Brancy's blog, which cheers Maine Governor Paul LaPage's decision to require food stamp recipients without children to get a job or lose benefits.

In the post French applauds the fact that LaPage managed to kick 80 percent of the people off of the program, claiming that they must not have needed the help in the first place.

However what they seemed to have missed was the fact that charitable organizations in Maine have been working overtime in order to fill the gap.

Courtesy of the Portland Press Herald:  

The growth of Good Shepherd and other charitable organizations shows how far government efforts are falling short, and the transformation of emergency interventions into permanent institutions is proof that Maine’s weak response to hunger is making the problem worse. 

How big is the problem? 

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are approximately 206,000 Mainers who experience food insecurity, the term for those who don’t have enough money to reliably get their hands on an adequate supply of safe, nutritious food. 

That number includes 24 percent of Maine’s children and 23 percent of its seniors. Maine ranks 12th in the nation for this measure of hunger, and first – or worst – in New England. 

But while the problem grows, the state’s response has been to pull back, using government policy to reduce the number of people who receive aid through entirely federally funded programs, leaving money in Washington that could be helping people here and putting more pressure on individuals who support charities and whose consciences won’t permit them to turn their backs.

“We’re no longer for emergencies. We’re a regular supplier of people’s food,” said Kristen Miale, Good Shepherd’s president, in a recent interview with the Maine Sunday Telegram. “Food banking isn’t the solution to hunger.”

I guess the folks behind the Good Shepherd understand the concept of being a good Christian.

What a shame that not all of those hiding behind that label recognize the responsibility.