Tag: Lily Beth Baker

So his lawyers are giddily gushin’

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Some tax-law experts questioned key parts of the letter, including how the lawyers defined “Russian” sources and lenders. Major companies in Russia frequently use subsidiaries in other jurisdictions, like Cyprus, the Netherlands or the British Virgin Islands, to conduct overseas business. Moreover, it was unclear what the lawyers meant by asserting that the tax returns did not “reflect” any income from Russian sources.

 

The letter also restricts itself to income on Mr. Trump’s returns, with no exploration of underlying transactions of other entities that file their own returns, such as partnerships.

 

Trump Lawyers Say He Had No Russian Income or Debt, With Some Exceptions
The New York Tiimes

 

So his lawyers are giddily gushin’
to report that no income from Russian
investments appears
for over ten years
(except for exceptions they’re hushin’)

Lily Beth Baker, 5/13/17

 

Now the Spice man is hiding in bushes

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“Whatever Spicer’s fate, the scrambled effort to address Comey’s firing has revealed something significant about this White House, which is that its press secretary is growing increasingly irrelevant.

 

“Already beset by critics who say he has lost his credibility, Spicer may now be losing his authority. His charge is to tell the media, and the public, what the president is thinking. And yet it is becoming increasingly clear that he is either not able to fulfill that task, or choosing not to.”

 

Sean Spicer under fire during crucial week for Trump
CNN Media

 

 

Now the Spice man is hiding in bushes
And he’ll answer all queries with shushes.
At the end of his rope
And unable to cope,
Does he even know where is own tush is?

Lily Beth Baker, 5/12/17

Now a journalist’s under arrest

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“So I persisted,” said Heyman, a journalist for Public News Service who had been wearing his press pass during the incident. “At some point, I think they decided I was too persistent trying to do my job.”

 

 […]

 

“He wasn’t doing anything different than what happens every day around the country, which is a reporter trying to get a question answered,” said Heyman’s attorney, Tim DiPiero on Wednesday. DiPiero also said he failed to see how Price walking through a hallway in the state house was a government process that Heyman interfered with.

 

<p align="right"Reporter arrested while trying to ask Trump health-care chief Tom Price questions about Obamacare replacement
CNBC

 

 

Now a journalist’s under arrest
for exclaiming too loud as he pressed
on repeal and replace
and its goal to erase
the protections already assessed.

Lily Beth Baker, 5/10/17

 

Trump’s Wall

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“The true test of the wall’s feasibility may boil down to property: The government only owns about a third of the land along the nearly 2,000-mile border between Mexico and the United States, and obtaining the rest would require untying a knot of legal and ownership issues.

 

While the government can use broad eminent domain powers—the right of the government to expropriate private property for public use, with fair payment—past border security efforts have shown that tactic to be both tricky and time-consuming.”

 

Trump’s border wall: A land grab from American property owners
Curbed

 

 

With the stroke of a pen you can order
a wall they will buy– reconnoiter
and they’ll work for a song
if you build it along
the original Mexican border.

Lily Beth Baker, 5/9/17

Fervor

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“It was a small illustration of how casually the president throws out questionable information that sounds good, even when he could easily — and truthfully — have made the same point about his crowd without hyperbole. (And as he accused the media of dishonesty).”

 

I tweeted a photo of the Trump rally crowd — and then things got crazy

 

At revival-like rallies he feeds
his insatiable ravenous needs
to suckle on praise
while he blathers and brays
to a base still consuming his screeds

Lily Beth Baker, 4/30/17

Being President’s so much more work

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“Trump, who spent years in the public limelight as a billionaire real estate magnate and reality television star, also lamented the lack of privacy in his new life as the country’s most prominent public servant.”

 

Trump: I thought presidency
would be ‘easier’ than ‘previous life’
Politico

 

 

Being President’s so much more work
than he thought but he’ll relish each perk
and build on his wealth
with circuitous stealth
while flaunting an arrogant smirk.

© Lily Beth Baker, 2017

Now our U.S. Department of State

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“An article on a State Department website about President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort has been removed after criticism that it was an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds.

 

“Critics complained that resources were being used to tout the for-profit club, which Trump refers to as the Winter White House. The club, in Palm Beach, Fla., is held in Trump’s trust, of which he is the sole beneficiary.”

 

State Department Removes Webpage Featuring Trump’s For-Profit Club, Mar-A-Lago

 

 

Now our U.S. Department of State
used its website to praise and conflate
Forty-five’s private club
as a suitable hub
wherein schmoozing and profits gestate.

© 2017 Lily Beth Baker

 

 

A misogynist racist named Bill

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“Bill O’Reilly’s forced exit from Fox News is netting him a payout of up to $25 million, two sources with knowledge confirmed to NBC News.”

[…]

While O’Reilly was a star of the network, bringing in about 3.9 million viewers a night in recent months, Sherman said the accusations became too much — and even 21st Century Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch could no longer justify keeping him on.

 

Bill O’Reilly Severance: Fox News Host to Get $25 Million
NBC

 

 

A misogynist racist named Bill
Rose to fame with his arrogant swill.
But then Fox pulled the plug
On the lecherous thug,
With a severance of twenty-five mil.

© 2017 Lily Beth Baker

 

How I hope I’m alive on the day

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“The tactics that have always served him will not work here. You can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time. But good luck fooling the feds any of the time.

 

Heaven only knows where this will end up. Maybe the campaign will be exonerated. Maybe we will discover the Russian meddling was plotted by Trump and Vladimir Putin over drinks in a hot tub at Mar-a-Lago.

 
Either way, there is something to be said for the simple fact that the investigation is underway, that Trump and his team will finally be forced to answer serious questions from serious people who will not be impressed by alternative facts and brazen deflections. It’s the kind of knowledge that renews your faith in the system. And in karma.”

 

Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columbia Daily Tribune

 

 

How I hope I’m alive on the day
that his carcass is carted away
to the furthermost reaches
of his scurrilous breaches
where Karma’s demanding her pay

© 2017 Lily Beth Baker

 

It looks like the bullies are winning

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“We wondered if Palm Sunday might have been an act of civil disobedience. We imagined a prophetic Jewish teacher mimicking the pomp and slender of Roman colonizers in a parade dedicated not to himself, but to the outcasts who had gathered to hear a message of grace. We asked if the parade may have been a celebration, not of Jesus’ ego, but of his love of all the people who were colonized, disabled, rejected, humiliated and oppressed. Perhaps he was illustrating that love can build a temple from all the stones other builders have rejected.

[…}

“We remembered the words of Rumi: ‘Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.’

 

“Then, we imagined what such a parade would mean in our day. Surely it would call us all out of our allegiance to the death star of capitalism where human worth is calculated by what we have instead of who we are. It would call us out of any of the world’s empires where we are forced to participate in the slaughter of innocents. And it would call us out of artificial living where human temples, pipelines and skyscrapers displace the sacred temple of nature.

 

Do the Bullies of the World Ultimately Win?
Jim Rigby

 

 

Since November our heads are still spinning
and it looks like the bullies are winning.
With more wars in the works
while the rich rake in perks,
will we witness an end or beginning?

© 2017 Lily Beth Baker