☕️ IN THE MUD ☙ Monday, March 25, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Deadline looms for Trump appeal bond and options appear; RFK panicking poll-watching dems; judge allows illegals to vote and hold office in DC; Ukrainians whine about high-tech NATO tanks; and more.

Your roundup includes: a primer on the Trump bond problem and the likely way he will pull off another dealmaking miracle; democrats panicking over Robert Kennedy’s hamstrung but still lively campaign; federal judge green lights illegal aliens to vote in the nation’s capital because fairness; and the Ukrainians are complaining about NATO’s high-tech war machines.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 Today is a political thriller. It is President Trump’s deadline to satisfy Judge Engoran’s stratospheric, unprecedented, probably unconstitutional $454 million dollar bond requirement. And nobody knows what he has planned. The Guardian UK ran a helpful, related story yesterday — a story that in their glee, U.S. corporate media outlets have studiously avoided — headlined “Seizing Trump’s New York properties will not be easy for Letitia James.”  As I have said.

Now that James has her judgment, she is allowed to start collecting the money by garnishing and foreclosing on Trump’s properties. You might think that just filing the appeal should stop (‘stay’) the collections process; after all, the appellate court might reverse everything.

But way back in the very old days, some defendants used the appeal process to buy time for moving their assets out of the judgment’s reach. Obviously, Trump can’t move Trump Tower anywhere. But he could transfer the deed to a Cayman Island cutout or something. He should ask Biden how it’s done.

The law fixed that problem, by requiring defendants to “bond” the full amount of the judgment, if they to put collections on hold during the appeal. A “bond” is a third-party guarantee of payment, like insurance, or a bail bond, where a well-funded professional bonding company agrees to pay the judgment if the appeal loses — even if the defendant disappears.

Obviously, the bonding company itself must have the money to pay, which cuts down the list of possible providers in Trump’s mega bond case. And bond companies don’t take risks.They absolutely will not undertake a bond obligation without first getting collateral.

For example, to provide a $1 million dollar bond, a bonding company might first want a mortgage on the defendant’s house, and some liens on his cars. They won’t take just anything as collateral, like your collection of celebrity Pez dispensers. Trump Tower might be worth a few hundred million, but if it also has big bank loans, the bond company will probably pass.

Next, the more risk there is, the more the bond costs. Even though bonds are secured with collateral, customers “buy” the bonds. That’s how the bond seller makes money. In my experience, the average price of an appeal bond is ten percent (10%) of face value. In terms of this, this bond would be a unicorn. Nobody’s ever seen anything as big or like it. Plus it’s politics.

How could you possibly calculate the risk? What about the risk the democrats and the feds might try to cancel the bond company for helping Trump?

In other words, to buy an appeal bond — to stay collections during the appeal — Trump first must give the bonding company mortgages on collateral valued over $454 million (or even up to $600 million, with interest), and pay cash, at least $60 million, maybe more, as the bond price — money he’d never ever get back, regardless if he ultimately wins or loses.

There might not even be a bonding company big enough and crazy enough to get involved.

In hindsight, Judge Engoran’s “fine” looks calculated to drain Trump’s campaign account by effectively making it impossible to buy a bond. Trump could just put up the whole $500 million or so, depositing it in the court’s registry, and then he won’t need a bond.

Not coincidentally, $500 million is around the same amount Trump has in his presidential campaign account, as Judge Engoran (or anybody) could easily determine from Trump’s mandatory FEC filings.

If Trump can’t (or won’t) buy a bond or put up the money, he may still pursue the appeal. But in that case, Soros-backed District Attorney Letitia James can also start collecting, which is exactly what the TDS-infected corporate media can’t wait to see. The memes are already drowning the Internet.

But, as I’ve explained before, and as the Guardian article explained, it will be painfully difficult and tooth-gnashingly slow for James to collect Trump’s assets (though she’d get there eventually).

If Trump had any other way to come up with the money, he should do that, and not take a chance that some rogue judge will help James collect on an important asset.

Corporate media’s “Get Trump” hopes were dashed again when on Friday, the New York Times ran a (non-paywalled) story headlined, “Trump Media Merger Provides Trump a Potential Cash Lifeline.” With a quick bit of impressive financial wizardry and fast work, Trump’s Truth Social announced on Friday it had shareholder approval to merge with already-publicly-traded media company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which trades as DWAC.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Truth Social could start trading on the stock market as soon as this week, when the paperwork is complete. It was great news, but it’s still not the whole answer. CBS News ran an article Friday headlined, “Trump could score $3.5 billion from Truth Social going public. But tapping the money may be tricky.” The ‘tricky’ part is that owners, like Trump, are normally barred from selling any shares for at least six months after a company goes public. Sellers can sometimes get that restriction waived, but that takes time, too.

For several intractable reasons, there is no feasible way Trump could access the Truth Social money today, in time to put up the money to stay collections. But, if Trump could borrow what he needed from a coalition of billionaires, he could pay them back pretty fast with interest after he gets his Truth Social money. How likely is that? Remember the name of Trump’s bestselling 2009 book:

Let’s make a deal.

Finally, the court of appeals yet to rule on Trump’s massive motion filed last week to reduce or eliminate the bond requirement. That ruling will come today, and we will learn whether New York’s appellate court will uphold Engoran’s ridiculous judgment and prove it has also lost its damned mind. Or, if it does the right thing, and starts pumping water out of New York’s sinking ship of business, the bond requirement could be waived or greatly reduced.

I wouldn’t dare to predict what will happen today in this insane case. If Trump can pull the cash together without bankrupting his campaign, it would be better to just deposit the whole amount with the court than buy an unimaginably-expensive appeal bond for $50 million, which would also tie up all his collateral.

Stay tuned.

🔥 It’s not quite panic, not yet, but it’s close. The Hill ran an op-ed yesterday asking the obvious question, “Why are the Democrats suddenly so petrified of RFK Jr.?” Probably because polls show Kennedy is peeling off more disaffected democrats than disaffected Republicans. But let’s see what the Hill’s contributor Douglas MacKinnon thought.

The gist of the article was that the trouble seems to be with younger voters, a staple low-information democrat constituency. MacKinnon cited a startling New York Magazine story that ran last week under this headline:

The New York Magazine article, citing sources inside the Democrat National Committee, explained what it is about the rogue Kennedy that keeps waking Team Biden up in the middle of the night thrashing around in their Egyptian cotton sheets, and their moronic plan to deal with RFK:

The political math is straightforward: Leading Democrats believe that while voters don’t know much about Kennedy, the data suggests he takes more support from Biden than from Trump, and that pro-Trump forces are therefore eager to boost him. Much of his preliminary support appears to come from younger, male voters, and often Black and Latino ones — the exact group that Biden supporters are most concerned about maintaining.

Though many DNC Democrats are wary of talking about it or previewing their plans for fear of giving Kennedy fodder, it is already clear that they will make sure voters associate Kennedy with Trump, and that he is in fact a “stalking horse” and a “spoiler.” They point to conservative mega-donor, Tim Mellon, who has been both the largest donor to Kennedy’s super-PAC (contributing $20 million) and also one of Trump’s biggest backers (giving $15 million to his super-PAC).

Who doesn’t like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.? Trump supporters might not vote for the independent democrat, but they admire his courageous stance against biomedical tyranny. Blue-leaning independents, though, who can’t stomach Trump, but hate Biden, find a candidate to love in RFK.

In other words, an independent-running Kennedy is the dream candidate for a lot of left-leaning independents.

Cowardly Joe Biden won’t debate RFK, but he’ll sure slander the anti-vaccine campaigner behind the scenes.

🔥 The Hill ran a disgraceful article late last week headlined, “Federal judge tosses lawsuit challenging D.C.’s nonresident voting law.” On Thursday, Obama-appointed Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled against a group of seven Republican plaintiffs — all U.S. citizens and all registered to vote in D.C. — who argued the city’s “Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022” violated their Fifth Amendment rights by letting illegals water down their votes.

As a reminder, in 2019 Judge Jackson sentenced Roger Stone to 40 months for ‘lying to Congress,’ and ordered Paul Manafort to be held in jail prior to his conviction, but dismissed Benghazi charges against Hillary Clinton. In a prediction of greater things to come, Judge Jackson shut down President Trump’s 2017 travel ban against several terrorist countries, since they were ‘predominantly muslim.’

America last.

The District of Columbia’s 2022 law, which Judge Jackson just loves, removed any citizenship requirement to vote in city elections. “Noncitizen residents” can now vote for local officials, including mayor, local initiatives, referenda, recalls, and charter amendment measures. You aren’t going to believe this, but the law also allows “noncitizen residents” to run for D.C. government roles and serve on the city’s Board of Elections. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Actually, I gave it some thought. It might not be a bad thing! I’m not sure that illegal aliens could possibly vote worse than the citizens who live in 90%-democrat D.C. In the same 2022 legislative session as passing the illegal voter law, dumb-as-rocks DC also changed its criminal code, eliminating most mandatory minimum sentences and lowering maximum penalties for violent crimes.

The crime package was so bad that Mayor Muriel Bowser vetoed it — but it passed anyway, after the City Council overrode Bowser’s veto.

See what I mean? Why not give the illegals a try?  And while they’re at it, having perfected mail-away ballots and having dispensed with the citizenship requirement, why not go all the way and chuck the residency requirement, too? Let the “noncitizens” vote for the next DC mayor right where they are, by mail-in ballot, from the convenience of their home countries.

You can’t get more inclusive than that.

I’m not dumb enough to promise progressives won’t try, but this kind of thing is unlikely to spread very far beyond DC, since a similar law would be much harder to pass outside DC. Citizenship to vote and to hold office is required by most state constitutions, or by state election statutes, which can’t be so whimsically be changed by a single out-of-control city council.

Congress, with presidential approval, can review DC laws. If the Republicans ever regain control of the out-of-control federal government, they can vacate both the illegal voter law and the criminal ‘reform’ package.

The Hill reported Christopher Hajec, director of litigation for the Immigration Reform Law Institute — which represents the seven Republican plaintiffs in the lawsuit — said they’ve long planned for to appeal the “flawed and limited” decision. Given which judge they’d pulled, that was wise.

“This case is only just the beginning. It was always going to be decided at a higher level than a U.S. district court,” Mr. Hajec explained, quite reasonably adding “the very notion of our nation’s independence is threatened by this law and others like it.”

🚀 Uh-oh. Sour grapes alert. Last week, the state-run Kyiv Post ran a whiney story while this fantastical headline:

The sub-headline explained, “Considering how much kerchief-twisting there was about it in the first place, and how they are doing in the war right now, handing over top-end NATO tanks to Ukraine doesn’t look like a great idea.” It turns out that NATO’s fantastically-expensive, heavily armed and heavily armored, high-tech, top-tier battle tanks — like the US-made M1A2 Abrams — are not, apparently, doing so well in real life.

Here’s how the Ukrainians described it in the article’s opening paragraph:

By a long shot, the enduring image of a NATO-standard modern main battle tank in the Russo-Ukraine War is a video of a stopped vehicle getting hammered by cheap FPV drones, before it gets set on fire and burns down to a six-million-dollar hulk.

Almost a year later, the Ukrainian army mostly uses advanced Western tanks as expensive artillery pieces, lobbing shells at the Russians from a long distance. They stay away from the front line. 

In other words, $200 drones are taking out our ten million dollar tanks. Whatever battle our high-heeled generals imagined they were designing the tanks for existed only in the generals’ fevered, DEI-fueled imaginations. The tanks aren’t fighting each other in massive tank battles. Here’s how the Kyiv article described what is really happening on the battlefield:

Tank shootouts in Ukraine engagements are practically unheard of. State-of-the-art optics, depleted uranium armor-piercing shells, a world-beating main gun, thermal sights, wind sensors and fire control computers able to adjust for the rotation of the Earth undoubtedly would make tanks deadly in a one-to-one fight, but some operators said since battles like that aren’t happening, much of that high-tech kit is really just dead weight.

At 64 tons, the tanks are too heavy to cross most Ukrainian bridges or cross soft ground without getting stuck in the mud (where they are sitting ducks for drone strikes).

Did the tank designers ever consider tanks having to cross bridges? Or be used in the mud? Or were they just designed for giant sandboxes, to impress politicians driving in circles around the desert in Nevada?

The Ukrainians are basically saying thanks, but they don’t need any more tanks. This story is a perfect metaphor for the problems facing our modern army. Short of nuclear war, our fascination with expensive, fragile, internet-connected, high-tech toys is not working out well in real battles.

Biden’s war tanks are getting stuck in the mud. Biden’s polls are getting stuck in the mud. And the “Get Trump” effort is getting stuck in the mud. What’s going well for Biden?

Have a magnificent Monday! I’ll see you back here again tomorrow for more Coffee & Covid.

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