NEW INFO 5 Results from share redemption are posted. Less than .2% redeemed. Very bullish as investors are showing extreme confidence in the future of PLBY.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/playboy-mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-120000721.html
NEW INFO 4 Definitive Agreement to purchase 100% of Lovers brand stores announced 2/1.
https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Playboy+%28MCAC%29+Confirms+Deal+to+Acquire+Lovers/17892359.html
NEW INFO 3 I bought more on the dip today. 5081 total. Price rose AH to $12.38 (2.15%)
NEW INFO 2 Here is the full webinar.
https://icrinc.zoom.us/rec/play/9GWKdmOYumjWfZuufW3QXpe_FW_g--qeNbg6PnTjTMbnNTgLmCbWjeRFpQga1iPc-elpGap8dnDv8Zww.yD7DjUwuPmapeEdP?continueMode=true&tk=lEYc4F_FkKlgsmCIs6w0gtGHT2kbgVGbUju3cIRBSjk.DQIAAAAV8NK49xZWdldRM2xNSFNQcTBmcE00UzM3bXh3AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA&uuid=WN_GKWqbHkeSyuWetJmLFkj4g&_x_zm_rtaid=kR45-uuqRE-L65AxLjpbQw.1611967079119.2c054e3d3f8d8e63339273d9175939ed&_x_zm_rhtaid=866
NEW INFO 1 Live merger webinar with PLBY and MCAC on Friday January 29, 2021 at 12:00 NOON EST link below
https://mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/press-release-details/2021/Playboy-Enterprises-Inc.-and-Mountain-Crest-Acquisition-Corp-Participate-in-SPACInsider-ICR-Webinar-on-January-29th-at-12pm-ET/default.aspx
Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis
!!!WARNING READING AHEAD!!! TL;DR at the end. It will take some time to sort through all the links and read/watch everything, but you should.
In the next couple weeks, Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp is taking Playboy public. The existing ticker MCAC will become PLBY. Special purpose acquisition companies have taken private companies public in recent months with great success. I believe this will be no exception. Notably, Playboy is profitable and has skyrocketing revenue going into a transformational growth phase.
Porn - First and foremost, let's talk about porn. I know what you guys are thinking. “Porno mags are dead. Why would I want to invest in something like that? I can get porn for free online.” Guess what? You are absolutely right. And that’s exactly why Playboy doesn’t do that anymore. That’s right, they eliminated their print division. And yet they somehow STILL make money from porn that people (see: boomers) pay for on their website through PlayboyTV, Playboy Plus, and iPlayboy. Here’s the thing: Playboy has international, multi-generational name recognition from porn. They have content available in 180 countries. It will be the only publicly traded adult entertainment (porn) company. But that is not where this company is going. It will help support them along the way. You can see every Playboy magazine through iPlayboy if you’re interested. NSFW links below:
https://www.playboy.com/
https://www.playboytv.com/
https://www.playboyplus.com/
https://www.iplayboy.com/
Gambling - Some of you might recognize the Playboy brand from gambling trips to places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Cancun, London or Macau. They’ve been in the gambling biz for decades through their casinos, clubs, and licensed gaming products. They see the writing on the wall. COVID is accelerating the transition to digital, application based GAMBLING. That’s right. What we are doing on Robinhood with risky options is gambling, and the only reason regulators might give a shit anymore is because we are making too much money. There may be some restrictions put in place, but gambling from your phone on your couch is not going anywhere. More and more states are allowing things like Draftkings, poker, state ‘lottery” apps, hell - even political betting. Michigan and Virginia just ok’d gambling apps. They won’t be the last. This is all from your couch and any 18 year old with a cracked iphone can access it. Wouldn’t it be cool if Playboy was going to do something like that? They’re already working on it. As per CEO Ben Kohn who we will get to later, “...the company’s casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth.” Honestly, I stopped researching Scientific Games' sports betting segment when I saw the word ‘omni-channel’. That told me all I needed to know about it’s success.
“Our SG Sports™ platform is an enhanced, omni-channel solution for online, self-service and retail fixed odds sports betting – from soccer to tennis, basketball, football, baseball, hockey, motor sports, racing and more.”
https://www.scientificgames.com/
https://www.microgaming.co.uk/
“This latter segment has become increasingly enticing for Playboy, and it said last week that it is considering new tie-ups that could include gaming operators like PointsBet and 888Holdings.”
https://calvinayre.com/2020/10/05/business/playboys-gaming-ops-could-get-a-boost-from-spac-purchase/
As per their SEC filing:
“Significant consumer engagement and spend with Playboy-branded gaming properties around the world, including with leading partners such as Microgaming, Scientific Games, and Caesar’s Entertainment, steers our investment in digital gaming, sports betting and other digital offerings to further support our commercial strategy to expand consumer spend with minimal marginal cost, and gain consumer data to inform go-to-market plans across categories.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tMDAA1
They are expanding into more areas of gaming/gambling, working with international players in the digital gaming/gambling arena, and a Playboy sportsbook is on the horizon.
https://www.playboy.com/read/the-pleasure-of-playing-with-yourself-mobile-gaming-in-the-covid-era
Cannabis - If you’ve ever read through a Playboy magazine, you know they’ve had a positive relationship with cannabis for many years. As of September 2020, Playboy has made a major shift into the cannabis space. Too good to be true you say? Check their website. Playboy currently sells a range of CBD products. This is a good sign. Federal hemp products, which these most likely are, can be mailed across state lines and most importantly for a company like Playboy, can operate through a traditional banking institution. CBD products are usually the first step towards the cannabis space for large companies. Playboy didn’t make these products themselves meaning they are working with a processor in the cannabis industry. Another good sign for future expansion. What else do they have for sale? Pipes, grinders, ashtrays, rolling trays, joint holders. Hmm. Ok. So it looks like they want to sell some shit. They probably don’t have an active interest in cannabis right? Think again:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/09/24/playboy-gets-serious-about-cannabis-law-reform-advocacy-with-new-partnership-grants/?sh=62f044a65cea
“Taking yet another step into the cannabis space, Playboy will be announcing later on Thursday (September, 2020) that it is launching a cannabis law reform and advocacy campaign in partnership with National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Last Prisoner Project, Marijuana Policy Project, the Veterans Cannabis Project, and the Eaze Momentum Program.”
“According to information procured exclusively, the three-pronged campaign will focus on calling for federal legalization. The program also includes the creation of a mentorship plan, through which the Playboy Foundation will support entrepreneurs from groups that are underrepresented in the industry.” Remember that CEO Kohn from earlier? He wrote this recently:
https://medium.com/naked-open-letters-from-playboy/congress-must-pass-the-more-act-c867c35239ae
Seems like he really wants weed to be legal? Hmm wonder why? The writing's on the wall my friends. Playboy wants into the cannabis industry, they are making steps towards this end, and we have favorable conditions for legislative progress.
Don’t think branding your own cannabis line is profitable or worthwhile? Tell me why these 41 celebrity millionaires and billionaires are dummies. I’ll wait.
https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2019/07/12/top-celebrity-cannabis-brands/
Confirmation: I hear you. “This all seems pretty speculative. It would be wildly profitable if they pull this shift off. But how do we really know?” Watch this whole video:
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/playboy-ceo-telling-story-female-154907068.html
Man - this interview just gets my juices flowing. And highlights one of my favorite reasons for this play. They have so many different business avenues from which a catalyst could appear. I think paying attention, holding shares, and options on these staggered announcements over the next year is the way I am going to go about it. "There's definitely been a shift to direct-to-consumer," he (Kohn) said. "About 50 percent of our revenue today is direct-to-consumer, and that will continue to grow going forward.” “Kohn touted Playboy's portfolio of both digital and consumer products, with casino-style gaming, in particular, serving a crucial role under the company's new business model. Playboy also has its sights on the emerging cannabis market, from CBD products to marijuana products geared toward sexual health and pleasure.” "If THC does become legal in the United States, we have developed certain strains to enhance your sex life that we will launch," Kohn said. https://cheddar.com/media/playboy-goes-public-health-gaming-lifestyle-focus Oh? The CEO actually said it? Ok then. “We have developed certain strains…” They’re already working with growers on strains and genetics? Ok. There are several legal cannabis markets for those products right now, international and stateside. I expect Playboy licensed hemp and THC pre-rolls by EOY. Something like this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/842996758/10-playboy-pre-roll-tubes-limited?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=pre+roll+playboy&ref=sr_gallery-1-2&organic_search_click=1 Maintaining cannabis operations can be costly and a regulatory headache. Playboy’s licensing strategy allows them to pick successful, established partners and sidestep traditional barriers to entry. You know what I like about these new markets? They’re expanding. Worldwide. And they are going to be a bigger deal than they already are with or without Playboy. Who thinks weed and gambling are going away? Too many people like that stuff. These are easy markets. And Playboy is early enough to carve out their spot in each. Fuck it, read this too: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimosman/2020/10/20/playboy-could-be-the-king-of-spacs-here-are-three-picks/?sh=2e13dcaa3e05
Numbers: You want numbers? I got numbers. As per the company’s most recent SEC filing:
“For the year ended December 31, 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s historical consolidated revenue was $78.1 million and $101.3 million, respectively, historical consolidated net income (loss) was $(23.6) million and $(4.8) million, respectively, and Adjusted EBITDA was $13.1 million and $21.8 million, respectively.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Licensing segment contributed $44.2 million in revenue and $31.1 million in net income.”
“In the ninth months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Direct-to-Consumer segment contributed $40.2 million in revenue and net income of $0.1 million.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Digital Subscriptions and Content segment contributed $15.4 million in revenue and net income of $7.4 million.”
They are profitable across all three of their current business segments.
“Playboy’s return to the public markets presents a transformed, streamlined and high-growth business. The Company has over $400 million in cash flows contracted through 2029, sexual wellness products available for sale online and in over 10,000 major retail stores in the US, and a growing variety of clothing and branded lifestyle and digital gaming products.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
Growth: Playboy has massive growth in China and massive growth potential in India. “In China, where Playboy has spent more than 25 years building its business, our licensees have an enormous footprint of nearly 2,500 brick and mortar stores and 1,000 ecommerce stores selling high quality, Playboy-branded men’s casual wear, shoes/footwear, sleepwear, swimwear, formal suits, leather & non-leather goods, sweaters, active wear, and accessories. We have achieved significant growth in China licensing revenues over the past several years in partnership with strong licensees and high-quality manufacturers, and we are planning for increased growth through updates to our men’s fashion lines and expansion into adjacent categories in men’s skincare and grooming, sexual wellness, and women’s fashion, a category where recent launches have been well received.” The men’s market in China is about the same size as the entire population of the United States and European Union combined. Playboy is a leading brand in this market. They are expanding into the women’s market too. Did you know CBD toothpaste is huge in China? China loves CBD products and has hemp fields that dwarf those in the US. If Playboy expands their CBD line China it will be huge. Did you know the gambling money in Macau absolutely puts Las Vegas to shame? Technically, it's illegal on the mainland, but in reality, there is a lot of gambling going on in China. https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/10/19/magic-johnson-and-uncle-buds-cbd-brand-enter-china-via-tmall-partnership/?sh=271776ca411e “In India, Playboy today has a presence through select apparel licensees and hospitality establishments. Consumer research suggests significant growth opportunities in the territory with Playboy’s brand and categories of focus.” “Playboy Enterprises has announced the expansion of its global consumer products business into India as part of a partnership with Jay Jay Iconic Brands, a leading fashion and lifestyle Company in India.” “The Indian market today is dominated by consumers under the age of 35, who represent more than 65 percent of the country’s total population and are driving India’s significant online shopping growth. The Playboy brand’s core values of playfulness and exploration resonate strongly with the expressed desires of today’s younger millennial consumers. For us, Playboy was the perfect fit.” “The Playboy international portfolio has been flourishing for more than 25 years in several South Asian markets such as China and Japan. In particular, it has strategically targeted the millennial and gen-Z audiences across categories such as apparel, footwear, home textiles, eyewear and watches.” https://www.licenseglobal.com/industry-news/playboy-expands-global-footprint-india It looks like they gave COVID the heisman in terms of net damage sustained: “Although Playboy has not suffered any material adverse consequences to date from the COVID-19 pandemic, the business has been impacted both negatively and positively. The remote working and stay-at-home orders resulted in the closure of the London Playboy Club and retail stores of Playboy’s licensees, decreasing licensing revenues in the second quarter, as well as causing supply chain disruption and less efficient product development thereby slowing the launch of new products. However, these negative impacts were offset by an increase in Yandy’s direct-to-consumer sales, which have benefited in part from overall increases in online retail sales so far during the pandemic.” Looks like the positives are long term (Yandy acquisition) and the negatives are temporary (stay-at-home orders).
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921006093/tm213766-1_defa14a.htm
This speaks to their ability to maintain a financially solvent company throughout the transition phase to the aforementioned areas. They’d say some fancy shit like “expanded business model to encompass four key revenue streams: Sexual Wellness, Style & Apparel, Gaming & Lifestyle, and Beauty & Grooming.” I hear “we’re just biding our time with these trinkets until those dollar dollar bill y’all markets are fully up and running.” But the truth is these existing revenue streams are profitable, scalable, and rapidly expanding Playboy’s e-commerce segment around the world.
"Even in the face of COVID this year, we've been able to grow EBITDA over 100 percent and revenue over 68 percent, and I expect that to accelerate going into 2021," he said. “Playboy is accelerating its growth in company-owned and branded consumer products in attractive and expanding markets in which it has a proven history of brand affinity and consumer spend.”
Also in the SEC filing, the Time Frame:
“As we detailed in the definitive proxy statement, the SPAC stockholder meeting to vote on the transaction has been set for February 9th, and, subject to stockholder approval and satisfaction of the other closing conditions, we expect to complete the merger and begin trading on NASDAQ under ticker PLBY shortly thereafter,” concluded Kohn.
The Players: Suhail “The Whale” Rizvi (HMFIC), Ben “The Bridge” Kohn (CEO), “lil” Suying Liu & “Big” Dong Liu (Young-gun China gang). I encourage you to look these folks up. The real OG here is Suhail Rizvi. He’s from India originally and Chairman of the Board for the new PLBY company. He was an early investor in Twitter, Square, Facebook and others. His firm, Rizvi Traverse, currently invests in Instacart, Pinterest, Snapchat, Playboy, and SpaceX. Maybe you’ve heard of them. “Rizvi, who owns a sprawling three-home compound in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a 1.65-acre estate in Palm Beach, Florida, near Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, moved to Iowa Falls when he was five. His father was a professor of psychology at Iowa. Along with his older brother Ashraf, a hedge fund manager, Rizvi graduated from Wharton business school.” “Suhail Rizvi: the 47-year-old 'unsocial' social media baron: When Twitter goes public in the coming weeks (2013), one of the biggest winners will be a 47-year-old financier who guards his secrecy so zealously that he employs a person to take down his Wikipedia entry and scrub his photos from the internet. In IPO, Twitter seeks to be 'anti-FB'” “Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia looks like a big Twitter winner. So do the moneyed clients of Jamie Dimon. But as you’ve-got-to-be-joking wealth washed over Twitter on Thursday — a company that didn’t exist eight years ago was worth $31.7 billion after its first day on the stock market — the non-boldface name of the moment is Suhail R. Rizvi. Mr. Rizvi, 47, runs a private investment company that is the largest outside investor in Twitter with a 15.6 percent stake worth $3.8 billion at the end of trading on Thursday (November, 2013). Using a web of connections in the tech industry and in finance, as well as a hearty dose of good timing, he brought many prominent names in at the ground floor, including the Saudi prince and some of JPMorgan’s wealthiest clients.” https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/technology/at-twitter-working-behind-the-scenes-toward-a-billion-dollar-payday.html Y’all like that Arab money? How about a dude that can call up Saudi Princes and convince them to spend? Funniest shit about I read about him: “Rizvi was able to buy only $100 million in Facebook shortly before its IPO, thus limiting his returns, according to people with knowledge of the matter.” Poor guy :(
He should be fine with the 16 million PLBY shares he's going to have though :)
Shuhail also has experience in the entertainment industry. He’s invested in companies like SESAC, ICM, and Summit Entertainment. He’s got Hollywood connections to blast this stuff post-merger. And he’s at least partially responsible for that whole Twilight thing. I’m team Edward btw.
I really like what Suhail has done so far. He’s lurked in the shadows while Kohn is consolidating the company, trimming the fat, making Playboy profitable, and aiming the ship at modern growing markets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-ipo-rizvi-insight/insight-little-known-hollywood-investor-poised-to-score-with-twitter-ipo-idUSBRE9920VW20131003
Ben “The Bridge” Kohn is an interesting guy. He’s the connection between Rizvi Traverse and Playboy. He’s both CEO of Playboy and was previously Managing Partner at Rizvi Traverse. Ben seems to be the voice of the Playboy-Rizvi partnership, which makes sense with Suhail’s privacy concerns. Kohn said this:
“Today is a very big day for all of us at Playboy and for all our partners globally. I stepped into the CEO role at Playboy in 2017 because I saw the biggest opportunity of my career. Playboy is a brand and platform that could not be replicated today. It has massive global reach, with more than $3B of global consumer spend and products sold in over 180 countries. Our mission – to create a culture where all people can pursue pleasure – is rooted in our 67-year history and creates a clear focus for our business and role we play in people’s lives, providing them with the products, services and experiences that create a lifestyle of pleasure. We are taking this step into the public markets because the committed capital will enable us to accelerate our product development and go-to-market strategies and to more rapidly build our direct to consumer capabilities,” said Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy.
“Playboy today is a highly profitable commerce business with a total addressable market projected in the trillions of dollars,” Mr. Kohn continued, “We are actively selling into the Sexual Wellness consumer category, projected to be approximately $400 billion in size by 2024, where our recently launched intimacy products have rolled out to more than 10,000 stores at major US retailers in the United States. Combined with our owned & operated ecommerce Sexual Wellness initiatives, the category will contribute more than 40% of our revenue this year. In our Apparel and Beauty categories, our collaborations with high-end fashion brands including Missguided and PacSun are projected to achieve over $50M in retail sales across the US and UK this year, our leading men’s apparel lines in China expanded to nearly 2500 brick and mortar stores and almost 1000 digital stores, and our new men’s and women’s fragrance line recently launched in Europe. In Gaming, our casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth. Our product strategy is informed by years of consumer data as we actively expand from a purely licensing model into owning and operating key high-growth product lines focused on driving profitability and consumer lifetime value. We are thrilled about the future of Playboy. Our foundation has been set to drive further growth and margin, and with the committed capital from this transaction and our more than $180M in NOLs, we will take advantage of the opportunity in front of us, building to our goal of $100M of adjusted EBITDA in 2025.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
Also, according to their Form 4s, “Big” Dong Liu and “lil” Suying Liu just loaded up with shares last week. These guys are brothers and seem like the Chinese market connection. They are only 32 & 35 years old. I don’t even know what that means, but it's provocative.
https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1832415.htm
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-ii-002600994.html
Y’all like that China money?
“Mr. Liu has been the Chief Financial Officer of Dongguan Zhishang Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd., a regional designer, manufacturer and distributor of LED lights serving commercial customers throughout Southern China since November 2016, at which time he led a syndicate of investments into the firm. Mr. Liu has since overseen the financials of Dongguan Zhishang as well as provided strategic guidance to its board of directors, advising on operational efficiency and cash flow performance. From March 2010 to October 2016, Mr. Liu was the Head of Finance at Feidiao Electrical Group Co., Ltd., a leading Chinese manufacturer of electrical outlets headquartered in Shanghai and with businesses in the greater China region as well as Europe.”
Dr. Suying Liu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., commented, “Playboy is a unique and compelling investment opportunity, with one of the world’s largest and most recognized brands, its proven consumer affinity and spend, and its enormous future growth potential in its four product segments and new and existing geographic regions. I am thrilled to be partnering with Ben and his exceptional team to bring his vision to fruition.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
These guys are good. They have a proven track record of success across multiple industries. Connections and money run deep with all of these guys. I don’t think they’re in the game to lose.
I was going to write a couple more paragraphs about why you should have a look at this but really the best thing you can do is read this SEC filing from a couple days ago. It explains the situation in far better detail. Specifically, look to page 137 and read through their strategy. Also, look at their ownership percentages and compensation plans including the stock options and their prices. The financials look great, revenue is up 90% Q3, and it looks like a bright future.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
I’m hesitant to attach this because his position seems short term, but I’m going to with a warning because he does hit on some good points (two are below his link) and he’s got a sizable position in this thing (500k+ on margin, I think). I don’t know this guy but he did look at the same publicly available info and make roughly the same prediction, albeit without the in depth gambling or cannabis mention. You can also search reddit for ‘MCAC’ and very few relevant results come up and none of them even come close to really looking at this thing.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gOvAd6lebs452hFlWWbxVjQ3VMsjGBkbJeXRwDwIJfM/edit?usp=sharing
“Also, before you people start making claims that Playboy is a “boomer” company, STOP RIGHT THERE. This is not a good argument. Simply put. The only thing that matters is Playboy’s name recognition, not their archaic business model which doesn’t even exist anymore as they have completely repurposed their business.”
“Imagine not buying $MCAC at a 400M valuation lol. Streetwear department is worth 1B alone imo.”
Considering the ridiculous Chinese growth as a lifestyle brand, he’s not wrong.
Current Cultural Significance and Meme Value: A year ago I wouldn’t have included this section but the events from the last several weeks (even going back to tsla) have proven that a company’s ability to meme and/or gain social network popularity can have an effect. Tik-tok, Snapchat, Twitch, Reddit, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. They all have Playboy stuff on them. Kids in middle and highschool know what Playboy is but will likely never see or touch one of the magazines in person. They’ll have a Playboy hoodie though. Crazy huh? A lot like GME, PLBY would hugely benefit from meme-value stock interest to drive engagement towards their new business model while also building strategic coffers. This interest may not directly and/or significantly move the stock price but can generate significant interest from larger players who will.
Bull Case: The year is 2025. Playboy is now the world leader pleasure brand. They began by offering Playboy licensed gaming products, including gambling products, direct to consumers through existing names. By 2022, demand has skyrocketed and Playboy has designed and released their own gambling platforms. In 2025, they are also a leading cannabis brand in the United States and Canada with proprietary strains and products geared towards sexual wellness. Cannabis was legalized in the US in 2023 when President Biden got glaucoma but had success with cannabis treatment. He personally pushes for cannabis legalization as he steps out of office after his first term. Playboy has also grown their brand in China and India to multi-billion per year markets. The stock goes up from 11ish to 100ish and everyone makes big gains buying somewhere along the way.
Bear Case: The United States does a complete 180 on marijuana and gambling. President Biden overdoses on marijuana in the Lincoln bedroom when his FDs go tits up and he loses a ton of money in his sports book app after the Fighting Blue Hens narrowly lose the National Championship to Bama. Playboy is unable to expand their cannabis and gambling brands but still does well with their worldwide lifestyle brand. They gain and lose some interest in China and India but the markets are too large to ignore them completely. The stock goes up from 11ish to 13ish and everyone makes 15-20% gains.
TL;DR: Successful technology/e-commerce investment firm took over Playboy to turn it into a porn, online gambling/gaming, sports book, cannabis company, worldwide lifestyle brand that promotes sexual wellness, vetern access, women-ownership, minority-ownership, and “pleasure for all”. Does a successful online team reinventing an antiquated physical copy giant sound familiar? No options yet, shares only for now. $11.38 per share at time of writing. My guess? $20 by the end of February. $50 by EOY. This is not financial advice. I am not qualified to give financial advice. I’m just sayin’ I would personally use a Playboy sports book app while smoking a Playboy strain specific joint and it would be cool if they did that. Do your own research. You’d probably want to start here:
WARNING - POTENTIALLY NSFW - SEXY MODELS AHEAD - no actual nudity though
https://s26.q4cdn.com/895475556/files/doc_presentations/Playboy-Craig-Hallum-Conference-Investor-Presentation-11_17_20-compressed.pdf
Or here:
https://www.mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/default.aspx
Jimmy Chill: “Get into any SPAC at $10 or $11 and you are going to make money.”
STL;DR: Buy MCAC. MCAC > PLBY couple weeks. Rocketship. Moon.
Position: 5000 shares. I will buy short, medium, and long-dated calls once available.

Trump has been in Russia's pocket a long time here is more reading for those interested in the history.
Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.
► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.
► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)
► [Felix Sater](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Sater } is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.
► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.
► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.
► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.
► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower
► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”
► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.
► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties to the Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.
► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnell got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Craig Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.
► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Donald Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
► It's believed that Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.
► Alex Navalny has insinuated Paul Manafort passed along Trump's campaign information to the Kremlin via Kilimnik. In a 25-minute Youtube video (Russian with subtitles), Navalny shows footage of Deripaska with Russian deputy prime minister Sergei Prikhodko on his yacht in Norway in August 2016. Based on that footage, he alleges that information about the Trump campaign must have passed between the two. Senate Intelligence Report I believe concluded Paul gave the information to known Russian asset but that we have no proof this asset gave the information to the Kremlin? Im hoping someone in the comments has some more on the Paul Manafort accusation to perhaps clear this bullet up in a future edit.
​
Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:
► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. “I don't care, I believe Putin"
► Trump met in secret with Putin at the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria.
► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.
► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.
► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7
► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.
► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty
​
EDIT -
First want to say thanks for taking the time to read the post. Please take the time to also VOTE this election. Also thank you various users for the rewards and support.
On to actual edits :)
Firstly I've removed the link to Trump / Russian bounties allegations. Which was the last point in the post originally due to its lack of factual evidence.
Second I've changed a few points wording.
Third I've added a new bullet at the end that was passed a long to me yesterday by another user in another thread about Trump and his campaign manager.
Fourth I'd like to point out that this post is a collection of points from various other users in other threads and I personally don't want to take any credit for this post as I'm just carrying the torch with this post of several users before me who compiled many of these points.
​

General info
-Development of No Time to Die began in early 2016.
-In March 2017, screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade—who have worked on every Bond film since The World Is Not Enough (1999)—were approached to write the script.
-Sam Mendes stated that he would not return after directing Skyfall and Spectre.
-In February 2018, Danny Boyle was established as a frontrunner for the directing position.
-Boyle's original pitch to Broccoli and Wilson saw John Hodge writing a screenplay based on Boyle's idea with Purvis and Wade's version scrapped.
-Hodge's draft was greenlit, and Boyle was confirmed to helm the film with a production start date of December 2018.
-Danny Boyle and Hodge left the production in August 2018 due to creative differences.
-Following Boyle's departure, the film's release date became contingent on whether the studio could find a replacement within sixty days.
-Cary Joji Fukunaga was announced as the new director in September 2018.
-Fukunaga became the first American in the history of the series to direct an Eon Productions Bond film and the first director to receive a writing credit for any version
-Purvis and Wade were brought back to start working on a new script with Fukunaga in September 2018.
-Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace screenwriter Paul Haggis turned in an uncredited rewrite in November 2018, with Scott Z. Burns doing the same in February 2019.
-Fleabag and Killing Eve writer and creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge provided a script polish in April 2019.
Filming
-Production was scheduled to begin on 3 December 2018 at Pinewood Studios
-Filming was delayed until April 2019 after the departure of Boyle as director.
-Daniel Craig sustained an ankle injury in May whilst filming in Jamaica and subsequently underwent minor surgery
-Production was further interrupted when a controlled explosion damaged the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios and left a crew member with minor injuries
Music
-In July 2019, Dan Romer was announced as composer for the film's score
-Romer left the film due to creative differences in November 2019
-Hans Zimmer replaced Romer by January 2020.
-It is the first time in the Bond series history that a composer has been replaced during post-production, and the second major personnel change for the film after Boyle left as director.
Release date
-The release of No Time to Die was originally scheduled for 25th of October (premiere) and first week of November 2019 for the rest of the world
-The release of No Time to Die was postponed to 14 February 2020
-The release of No Time to Die was postponed to 3rd April 2020 in the UK and 8th April in the USA.
-The release of No Time to Die was postponed to 12th November 2020 in UK and 20th November 2020 for US
-The release of No Time to Die was postponed to 2 April 2021

Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.
► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.
► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)
► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.
► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.
► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.
► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.
► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."
► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower
► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”
► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.
► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties to the Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.
► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnell got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Craig Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.
► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Donald Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.
Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:
► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. “I don't care, I believe Putin"
► Trump met in secret with Putin at the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.
► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.
► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.
► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7
► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.
► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty
► Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it by the time of this writing.
► Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America's missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)
► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.
► Trump commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, a former advisor convicted several charges, including lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional committee proceeding, as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
Edit: thanks for the awards, credit should also go to u/victorvictor1 who originally composed this list. Also, please share so that more people can see this

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/4107658-Worst-story-of-cheating-but-have-I-over-stepped
Loooong OP:
CUniverse
This is a very long story, I will start with the back story as condensed as possible.
I became pregnant after 1 year whirlwind relationship with someone I split up my previous relationship for. I was living Amsterdam at the time where he is from, but moved back to the UK 6 months in. When I found out I was pregnant, I stayed in the UK, and he was saving money to move with me and we were due to live there. He arrived when I was 6.5 months, everything was great and we were happy. It turned out though that the 3000 euro he had supposed to have saved for us and baby, he gambled away on online poker so he came empty handed. I funded everything.
Slowly, he started to become recluse, and disappeared after work instead of coming home so that he could find places to play poker, in casinos or online. When I discovered this, I tried to urge him into GA, he went a few times, but eventually he was suicidal and depressed so I recommended he return back to the Netherlands. Our daughter was 1 by this time.
He went back, and after 3 months decided that he wouldn't return back to the UK, he hated it and missed his friends and family. Therefore the plan was to move there with our daughter. We did this, but it took me a year, long story.
He promised he had stopped gambling and was in a good place. Within weeks of arriving he went straight back into gambling, and also speaking to other women. During this time he was emotionally abusive and even struck me 3 times. I had an abortion because of how badly he treated me. The final straw was the fact that he slept with someone one random night, so I broke it off. I was determined to stay in Amsterdam but eventually would find somewhere else and move out into my own place with my daughter, then suddenly he found a new girl, one week after I broke up with him on tinder. He told me he was in love with her instantly and that he wanted me and our daughter to leave the house for a week, so that she could move in and work from our place for a few days. This was within 3 days of meeting this girl on tinder. I refused to allow this, and he verbally abuse me to the point where I had to flee the country with our child. He knew we were leaving but he didn't care.
Within 6 weeks, he had broken up with the tinder girl and was begging from to come back, saying that he was depressed and didn't know who he was back then and wanted to give us another go. Of course I objected. For a whole year he tried everything, gave up gambling, became selfless instead of selfish and really showed me he was ready. So I told him I would consider returning mostly for our child.
By May 2020 we were locked down together in Amsterdam and I was working from home there and became pregnant. We were happy about it and he thought it was just what we needed to finally cement the return of our relationship. I was reluctant to put a label on us though and said I needed time, because I was traumatised from what happened between us before. Especially the physical abuse. But he really seemed like a changed man, and in fact, he had a terribly childhood, so we put it down to that, and he said he would get therapy to address his issues.
In August we went on vacation everything was wonderful, and by September, something changed.
I went back to London for a couple weeks and I sensed something was off. I asked him outrightly, if he was seeing someone else while I was in London still. He told me no. I arrived in Amsterdam a week later, and checked his phone while he slept. It was almost completely clean, except he left a tiny piece of evidence, along with blonde hair all over the house and I managed to get a confession out of him after pressing him for a few days. He had met the girl 3 weeks earlier and was sleeping with her. He told me he did it because I wouldn't go publicly official to our friends and family with him. He felt neglected and stressed after a year of trying to get me back.
I made up my mind there and then that I would get my revenge for him doing this too me again. In addition, he slept with her without protection and slept with me too, before the confession thus putting my health at risk which I couldn't forgive.
This is where it gets twisted.
I told him id forgive him and stay, for the sake of our kids and that I loved him. This was a lie, I was just plotting how to get him back. Things went great the following weeks, I was acting the part of loving and forgiving girlfriend very easily. At some point I caught him on WhatsApp with the girl ( he had told me they had cut contact). She was pursing him, crying etc.. saying she was in love with him and heartbroken that he had too end it with her. I took a huge step evading his privacy after this and I managed to install his WhatsApp on my laptop, so I was practically spying on every convo he was having. Eventually I told him he should meet up with her one final time and end it because i had to travel back to the Uk and I didn't want him to see her while I was gone.. or more like, I wanted to test if he would, knowing I would be able to see their convos.
When they met up he came back and asked me if I would consider a 3 way relationship with the two of them. Me being the primary. I told him I would consider it when returned from London. Of course I had no intention to do so, but just wanted to see this girl face to face, (sick I know) so we all met up, discussed things, and well it was painful, but at the end, I told them they were not to see one another while I was away and I would consider the 3way after I had the baby.
While I was there, I was still connected to his WhatsApp as I mentioned and saw they had met 3 times. Which he lied about to my face.
Upon returning though, he ended it with her and said he wanted to focus on his family. Due to the fact that he met up with her while I was away, again displaying how little he respected me, I was driven even further by seeking revenge, so much that I didn't let on that I knew anything. So all these months of knowing what he has been up to, he is none the wiser.
The current situation is that he wants for sure that I move here permanently to Amsterdam once baby is born (in London) with our other child and we buy a new house, and start a fresh... however, of course, there is no way in hell I can do this after all this deceit. I cannot believe how badly I have allowed myself to be treated.
So, because I told him I had forgiven him, I was finding it impossible to go back on my word without admitting that I was spying the whole time. So I have been creatively (insanely) thinking of other ways out... of ways that will allow me to break up with him and him not having any power to force me to stay.
One night, after not checking his actual phone for a long time, I saw he had a dating app installed on his phone, but only once. after 6 consecutive days of checking, I didn't see it anymore. But I initially did check his phone because he was acting weird again all of a sudden. So, I decided to re install the app I saw while he slept, and then I saw he was speaking to multiple women for 6 months, but had not met any of them. This inspired me to make a fake profile, with photos of a friend of mine he doesn't know. He matched with my profile and is planning to meet up with this girl on Friday ( I am going back to the UK tomorrow for Christmas)...
Now, if you have gotten this far you may think this is the craziest story ever (and I have missed some crazy bits out)...and may be thinking I am insane for staying and more insane for spying...however, when you're with someone who won't let you go, it is so so so very hard to get out. Especially as his family are all so adamant that I give him chance after chance, and he guilt trips me constantly with his issues and tells me I am the only person who can make him happy. I know I have over stepped by spying on him this intensely, but, I became desperate. It has been a horrible few months being pregnant and dealing with all these revelations that I have made myself privy to by having so much access to his privacy.
I expect to be scolded and told how wrong I am and that I have overstepped, but, for the first time in months I finally feel like I can throw this at him (planning to meet the girl on the app) and he will accept that I can no longer stay with him after this and give in. I don't know how I will expose the fact that I know he has planned to meet a girl, but at this point, I just need to get out.

Trump has been in Russia’s pocket for a long time:
► Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.
► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to useTrump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.
► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)
► [Felix Sater](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Sater } is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.
► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.
► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.
► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.
► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower
► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”
► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.
► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties to the Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.
► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnell got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Craig Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.
► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Donald Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.
Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin: ► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. “I don't care, I believe Putin"
► Trump met in secret with Putin at the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria.
► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.
► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.
► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7
► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.
► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty
► Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it
Compiled by u/Torbert420.

Good morning, hope everyone trades responsibly, let’s make some money!

DOW JONES

Boeing Company (BA) - Air Lease (AL) updated on its order book deliveries, sales and new significant financing occurring in Q2; at the end of the quarter, its fleet was comprised of 301 owned aircraft and 81 managed aircraft, with 398 new aircraft on order from Boeing and Airbus (EADSY) set to deliver through 2026; it delivered one new Airbus A320neo aircraft from its order book, and sold four aircraft.
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is facing calls from over 170 nonprofit groups to stop selling its talc-based Baby Powder worldwide, over concerns that it contains cancer-causing Asbestos, while some are also calling for the clearing of existing inventories.
Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) Q3 20 (USD): Adj. EPS 0.83 (exp. 1.17), Revenue 34.6bln (exp. 34.36bln), FY20 Adj. EPS view 4.65-4.75 (exp. 5.42); Suspending share repurchase programme, raises quarterly dividend to USD 0.4675/shr, a 2.2% increase. US Retail Pharmacy SSS +3.0% (exp. +1.2%). Most significant COVID-19 impact was in the UK market which required a review resulting in a non-cash impairment charge of USD 2bln. Boots (UK) will be cutting around 4,000 jobs. Annual cost savings to be in excess of USD 2bln by FY2022.

NASDAQ 100

Alphabet Inc (GOOG/GOOGL) said it has shut down its cloud project named “Isolated Region” and added that it was not weighing options to offer its cloud platform in China; earlier reports had stated that GOOG had shelved the project in China and other politically sensitive countries in May, partly due to rising geopolitical tensions and the pandemic; GOOG, however, added that the project’s shutdown was not due to either of those two reasons and that it has not offered cloud platform services in China.
American Airlines Group (AAL) / United Airlines (UAL) have temporarily halted flights to Hong Kong after its government-imposed coronavirus testing requirements for airline crews, according to Politico.
Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST) June sales update saw comparable sales (ex-gasoline and FX) rose 13.6% in the June five-week period, accelerating from the +9.2% seen in May, beating forecasts for around 9% growth.
Facebook, Inc. (FB) announced it is starting a chat with a business using QR codes, where people can scan QR codes businesses show at stores, product packaging or receipts to start a chat. It notes there are over 50mln WhatsApp Business app users globally every month.
Gilead Sciences (GILD) plans to make more of its drug remdesivir available for Germany and Europe from the fall, and will decide how much each country gets based on the rate of infection; it added that it could increase its worldwide monthly production from currently 190,000 treatment cycles to two million treatment cycles in December. Remdesivir is currently the only drug granted a conditional marketing authorisation by the EU for its use in COVID-19 patients.Oracle Corp. (ORCL) (Information Technology/Application Software) has been awarded a cloud services agreement by the Canadian government.

S & P 500

Carnival Corp. (CCL) Aida cruises are to recommence sailing vacations in August.
Ford Motor (F) said its China vehicle sales increased 3% in April-June from a year earlier, its first quarterly sales rise in China in almost three years; China sales grew by 158,589 units in Q2, attributed to the rise to a stronger vehicle line up and “strong demand following the lifting of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions”.
Mylan NV (MYL) announced it received FDA approval for its Hulio, a biosimilar to AbbVie Inc. (ABBV) Humira, for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.
Twitter, Inc. (TWTR) has been accused of being biased against conservatives and demanded information about its reactions to two tweets by President Donald Trump; two GOP lawmakers allege TWTR’s content moderation was not neutral. Meanwhile, analysts at Citi note its shares overreacted to the potential subscription service reports yesterday. Analyst Jason Bazinet says although it makes sense, there are many unknowns, such as the price and whether or not it will have advertisements. The analyst highlights that a consumer survey shows roughly 10% of its respondents were willing to pay for a USD 5/mth plan without ads and more analytic services. Citi estimates if such a service were to occur, it would be priced at USD 20/year internationally and USD 60/year in the US, assuming a 5% penetration for base case and 10% for its bull case with advertisements, the analyst believes the revenue contribution would be limited. Citi maintain a neutral rating.
United Continental Holdings (UAL) expects to recognise USD 300mln in employee separation charges in Q2, with USD 50mln to be in cash.
ViacomCBS (VIAC) reached a deal to stream all the UEFA Champions League and Europa League matches starting in August.

OTHER

Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) Q1 20 (USD): Adj. EPS -1.96 (exp. -1.22), revenue 1.31bln (exp. 1.39bln). Announced it is to close 200 stores over two years as sales fell around 50% during pandemic; BBBY said it was not reporting comp sales due to temporary store closures.
DocuSign (DOCU) had its PT upgraded at Wedbush to USD 240 (prev. USD 165, prev. closing price 206.35). The analyst “continues to believe DOCU’s deal flow is holding up well/stronger than expected in this Covid-19 pandemic environment which bodes well for strong underlying metrics/headline numbers during FY2Q”.
DraftKings (DKNG) and Twin River Worldwide (TRWH) Mardi Gras Casino announced the opening of DKNG’s temporary sportsbook at the casino in Black Hawk, Colorado. Guests can place bets at the sportsbook from 10th July.
Energy Transfer (ET) provided further clarification around news reports regarding the operations of the Dakota Access Pipeline, stating that it has never suggested that it would defy a court order. Rather, Dakota Access Pipeline was seeking appropriate relief from that order through the established legal process.
Japan Display (6740 JT) : FY group net loss JPY 101.42bln (prev. net loss JPY 106.59bln), operating loss JPY 38.54bln (prev. loss JPY 27.23bln), recurring loss JPY 57.76bln (prev. JPY 40.37bln).
Moderna (MRNA) announced a collaboration for large-scale commercial fill-finish manufacturing of its vaccine candidate with Rovi.
PTC (PTC) expects to deliver fiscal third quarter 2020 ARR growth of 9% year over year, 10% in constant currency; and also expects to deliver double-digit revenue and free cash flow year-over-year growth for the fiscal third quarter 2020; it will report results on 29th July.
Restaurant Brands (QSR) Burger King in the UK is warning of 1,600 potential job losses as it could close up to 10% of its restaurants
SAP (SAP GY, SAP) – Q2 prelim: total revenue EUR 6.74bln, +2% (+1% non-IFRS), operating profit EUR 1.28bln, +55% YY (+8% non-IFRS), non-IFRS cloud revenue EUR 2.04bln +21% YY (19% non-IFRS). At present, cloud backlog seen at EUR 6.65bln, +20%, cloud backlog remains strong but cloud revenue in Q2 was impacted by lower pay-as-you-go transactional revenue given COVID-19. Reiterates FY20 outlook. For FY20: confirm non-IFRS revenue EUR 27.8-28.5bln vs. Prev. EUR 27.6bln, cloud revenue EUR 8.3-8.7bln vs. prev. EUR 7.0bln, operating profit EUR 8.1-8.7bln vs. Prev. EUR 8.2bln. Have seen a strong sequential improvement compared to Q1 regarding software license revenue. Q2 & H1 results will be released on 27th July.
Siemens (SIE GY, SIEGY) – Are to spin off 55% of Siemens Energy to shareholders will equate to 1 Siemens Energy share for 2 Siemens shares. Initial listing of new shares is scheduled for 28th September 2020, will commence with a BBB rating at S&P. Siemens will retain a 35.1% stake in the spin-off and the Siemens pension trust an additional 9.9% stake, as such Siemens no longer has a controlling share. Further stake reductions could take place at a significant scale in the next 12-18 months. Separately, Co. are not planning any job reductions from COVID-19. For reference, in FY19 Siemens Energy generated revenue of circa EUR 29bln according to Siemens AG combined statements.

Additional US Equity Stories

Of note for Social Media names (FB, TWTR, SNAP), ByteDance is reportedly considering a change in the corporate structure to distance the app from China, and is also considering a TikTok HQ outside of China, according to WSJ.
Peloton (PTON) new product will probably not be a rowing machine or exercise bike, its CFO announced, but it could potentially be a lower price treadmill. The CFO stated the co. believes “the running and boot camp category is two-to-three [times] the size of the bike category”, adding it is first and foremost on their minds, reports Barron’s.
Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) CFO says towards the end of Q3 online volume sales reached Black Friday levels on a daily basis, and May sales increased almost 120%, with June sales growth even higher.
Tesla (TSLA) CEO Musk announced the automaker was "very close" to developing fully autonomous vehicles and could work out the basics of that technology as soon as this year; he reiterated that the electric vehicle maker has solved most of the essential challenges toward achieving fully self-driven cars that needs no human behind the wheel. The Tesla and SpaceX chief was reaffirming a goal first expressed in 2019.
Delta AIrlines (DAL) CEO reiterates urge for workers to consider voluntary departure., and announced it flew 20% of customers over the July 4th weekend.

"Lindsey’s been a personal disappointment." - Joe Biden, in the words of so many before him
What a year! We'll be on hiatus until Monday, January 4. Safe and happy holidays, and see you around the inbox in 2021.

Night Of The Living Fed

Say what you will about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but it takes a special kind of work ethic to spend the weekend before Christmas holding up coronavirus relief for nefarious political reasons, while taking just one quick break to get a vaccine in short supply. Sorry, not work ethic—what’s the phrase?—moral bankruptcy.

• A final relief agreement remains elusive after Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), decided to hold billions of dollars hostage to a late-announced demand that would cut off Federal Reserve lending programs created by the CARES Act. That’s for no purpose other than to hamstring the Biden administration, and it’s a big ol’ non-starter. As incoming NEC Director Brian Deese said in a statement: “Congress’s good faith effort to deliver immediate relief should not be delayed by provisions that could put our future financial stability at risk.”
  
• And yet, here we are! Lawmakers have until midnight on Friday to approve an extension of federal funding (and the attached stimulus package), which does not appear likely. Thanks to Toomey’s last-minute, godawful proposal, the House has passed another stopgap spending bill and the Senate is expected to do so shortly, in order to avoid a government shutdown while negotiations continue into the weekend. Republicans: Burning the Midnight Oil to Deny You Aid Unless It Screws Over Joe Biden Somehow™.
  
• It bears repeating that the deal Republicans are obstructing is one they’ve already hacked into an insulting sliver of what it could and should be. Where Democrats have demanded $1,200 direct payments, the restoration of $600 weekly unemployment insurance, retroactive benefits, and funding for state and local governments, Republicans have winnowed that down to $600 checks (“it’s nine months of rent, Michael, what could it cost? $10?”), $300 unemployment benefits that will end earlier as a “compromise” for those checks, and a wet raspberry to be blown in the direction of the millions of people who could lose their jobs when state and local governments have to find additional budget cuts.
  

In their mad scramble back to Austerity Mode, Republicans have held off calls for larger direct payments from (checks notes) Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and (squints at notes, dons bifocals) President Donald Trump.

• Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) shot down Hawley’s bill to provide $1,200 direct payments, citing the national deficit, which he remembered this morning upon waking from a peaceful four-year slumber in a distant forest. Sending hungry families $1,200 checks would be “mortgaging our children's future,” said Johnson, who voted for a $741 billion defense budget last week. The Washington Post reported that White House aides stepped in on Thursday to stop Trump from calling for $2,000 checks, out of fear it would blow up negotiations. We’re sick of saying this all the time, but out of respect for the presidency, it seems like we should listen to what Mr. Trump has to say.
  
• While Republicans waste time on attempted sabotage, millions of people are in for the bleakest Christmas since Melania was at the top of her decorating game. The Labor Department reported on Thursday that new unemployment claims rose to 885,000, up 23,000 from the previous week and the highest weekly total since September. Nearly 13 million Americans are behind on their rent or mortgage, according to the latest Census survey, and just under 27.4 million adults reported suffering from food scarcity. If Ron Johnson’s so concerned about our children’s future, wait ‘til he hears about their present.
  

The embarrassing stimulus package that Senate Republicans will eventually, begrudgingly agree to is only on the table because they worry they’ll lose both Georgia Senate runoffs next month if they don’t pass something. Imagine what relief efforts will look like if Mitch McConnell is still in power in the new year without his majority at stake, then grab a shift to help Georgia voters send him packing.

Look No Further Than The Crooked Media

Unholier Than Thou just released a very special episode with Crooked Media alum Brittany Packnett Cunningham. Phill and Brittany discuss the idea of Jesus Christ in the modern context as a social justice warrior. With Christmas fast approaching, the discussion around the identity (as a brown man, inmate, undocumented immigrant, etc.) of the holiday’s namesake is more relevant than ever. Take a listen, and make sure to subscribe to Unholier Than Thou wherever you get your podcasts →

Under The Radar

Here, we got you a little Christmas grift: Jared Kusher helped create a shell company that funneled millions of dollars in campaign funding to Trump family members. American Made Media Consultants Corporation, whose creation Kushner approved, has spent approximately half of the Trump campaign’s $1.26 billion in total funds since 2019. The company allowed the Trump campaign to shield details of its spending, and while earlier reporting pinned the whole scheme on former Trump Campaign Manager Brad Parscale, we now know that the family was directly involved: Lara Trump was AMMC’s president, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew was (fittingly) veep, and Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman was treasurer and secretary. Nothing a last-minute blanket pardon won’t clear up!

What Else?

The Trump administration has abruptly halted defense briefings for Biden’s transition team. After Axios reported that Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller had ordered Pentagon officials to stop cooperating with the transition, Miller explained that it was just for a wildly unusual holiday break. Here’s Biden transition director Yohannes Abraham: “Let me be clear: there was no mutually agreed upon holiday break."
The Supreme Court delayed a ruling on whether Trump can exclude undocumented immigrants from the Census count. The three liberal justices disagreed that it was “premature” to rule that the policy is unconstitutional.
Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA), an incoming White House senior advisor, has tested positive for coronavirus after campaigning alongside Biden in Georgia on Tuesday. Biden tested negative on Thursday.
Former national security advisor Michael Flynn has continued calling for Trump to institute martial law to remain in power, arguing that military coups are actually no big deal in a Thursday appearance on Newsmax.
Rupert Murdoch has received his first dose of the coronavirus vaccine, while Tucker Carlson goes on his network and scares the shit out of people with vaccine disinformation.
New York City’s Department of Investigation released a report outlining the many ways the NYPD screwed up during the George Floyd protests, resulting in excessive use of force.
The New York Times has retracted the reporting of its Caliphate podcast and will return the Peabody award it won, acknowledging that the central figure’s account of acting as an ISIS executioner in Syria couldn’t be substantiated.
The Space Force announced that its members will be called “Guardians,” and that this was the result of a year-long naming process, and that it is “a name chosen by space professionals, for space professionals,” and that Guardians will be hired based on resemblance to Chris Pratt, and only that last part is made up.
Atlantic City is auctioning off the opportunity to blow up Trump’s casino. If that’s out of your price range, keep in mind that tweeting “lol remember when you lost” at the president is both legal and free.
We normally wouldn't amplify vaccine misinformation, but this is important.

Be Smarter

The extensive Russian hack of federal networks that the president has yet to acknowledge keeps getting more alarming. At least six government departments were breached in an operation that went undetected for eight months. DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned that malware-infused software updates from SolarWinds may not have been hackers’ only access point to government networks, and restoring security to those networks may take months. It’s still unclear how many total agencies were affected or what data may have been stolen. Anyway, remember three decades ago, in 2018, when the Trump administration eliminated the cybersecurity coordinator role on the NSC, and then spent 2019 bullying a whole bunch of cybersecurity experts out of the government? Seems like that might be worth a second look.

What A Sponsor

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Is That Hope I Feel?

The FDA has authorized Moderna's coronavirus vaccine.
Nearly 76,000 new voters, a majority of them under the age of 35, have registered in Georgia since the November election.
A federal judge has rejected a lawsuit from Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Purdue (R-GA) aiming to get those new voters’ ballots thrown out.
More than 1.1 million people in four countries have received their first coronavirus vaccine shots, according to a Bloomberg vaccine tracker that’s deeply soothing to stare at.
Look at you. Thank you. Keep it going.

Enjoy

Netflix Is A Joke on Twitter: "We asked @KeatonPatti to force a bot to watch over 1,000 hours of holiday movies and then asked it to write a holiday movie of its own. Then we animated it. Here it is"

There's a lot of disinformation out there spread by foreign trolls and domestic militants. Qanon is nonsense but it serves a purpose of blunting the facts. "You say Trump was helped by the Russians? What about Hillary eating babies?"
A poster named Tobert420 put together a comprehensive list that worth reviewing before voting in the coming election. Since the goal of those spreading disinformation is to muddy the waters, I thought I would share his work. Knowledge is power.

An Overview of Donald Trump’s numerous ties to Russia, with sources!

📷
Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.
► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.
► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)
► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.
► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.
► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.
► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.
► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."
► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower
► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”
► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.
► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties to the Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.
► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnell got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Craig Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.
► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Donald Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.
Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:
► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. “I don't care, I believe Putin"
► Trump met in secret with Putin at the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.
► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.
► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.
► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7
► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.
► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty
► Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it by the time of this writing.
► Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America's missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)
► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.
► Trump commuted the sentence of Robert Stone, a former advisor convicted several charges, including lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional committee proceeding, as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.
► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.
► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)
► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.
► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.
► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.
► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.
► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."
► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower
► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”
► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.
► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties to the Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.
► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnell got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Craig Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.
► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Donald Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.
Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:
► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. “I don't care, I believe Putin"
► Trump met in secret with Putin at the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.
► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.
► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.
► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7
► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.
► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty
► Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it by the time of this writing.
► Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America's missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)
► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.
► Trump commuted the sentence of Robert Stone, a former advisor convicted several charges, including lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional committee proceeding, as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

Images HERE
The Iconic BBC CRIMEWATCH Episode
THE HORRORS OF 1975
One case which had received notoriety in the UK was the murder of Eve Stratford (aged just 21), which was remarkably linked to the murder of Lynne Weedon (aged just 16) after thirty years.
In 2004 the two killings were discovered to have been committed by the same perpetrator using DNA testing. And so, two murders across different parts of a sprawling London were established to have been a committed by a serial killer – who for forty years had been hiding in plain sight.
Eve’s murder occurred on the 18th March 1975 while Lynne’s was almost six months after on the 10th September 1975 both occurring in suburban London.
There was also potential links to a third murder of Lynda Farrow who was killed in her home in the January of that year with many similarities to the other two.
The three murders were all in the Greater London area of Leyton, Hounslow and Chigwell.
The double murders occurred in 1975 and it is chilling to think that the killer has been possibly been roaming free every since. The case was re-opened in 2007 but it is one of those that we really are not any closer to despite all of the years passed.
As of 2020 the case remains open.
THE BUNNY – LEYTON.
Eve Stratford had moved to Leyton with her boyfriend in 1972 having been raised by a German mother and English father in the Aldershot area of southern England.
At the time of her death Eve was working as a playboy bunny in the Playboy Club of Park Lane which had lead to the unfortunate dubbing of the murderer as the “Bunny Killer.” Eve was also a centrefold for Mayfair magazine – an adult magazine – the piece had been released just days before her murder.
Eve was found by her boyfriend at their flat in Leyton. Her throat had been cut multiple times and a nylon stocking was tied to one ankle while she was bound with a scarf. Lynne’s boyfriend at the time was Tony Priest – the lead singer of pop band Onyx (not to be confused with a 1990s Hip Hop Act).
There is potential that Eve knew her killer. Neighbours were said to have heard muted conversation, followed by a bang with no discernible ruckus and no damage to suggest forced entry.
There was semen found on Eve’s clothes and a bouquet of bloody flowers was next to her body when she was discovered. I have to say that the police did describe the rape as “likely” with police at the time being unable to rule out consensual sex. While this may seem pragmatic on behalf of the detectives. I feel it casts aspersions on the victim.
This had all occurred around early evening between 4pm and 5pm on March 18th 1975.
One interesting theory was that the killer was a stalker that knew Eve’s whereabouts and when she would be home alone (bear in mind she lived with three men). They could very possibly have disguised themselves as a flower delivery man (explaining the blood-soaked fresh bouquet).
This theory was posted on many forums online and should only be considered that a theory.
THE TEENAGER – HOUNSLOW.
Lynne’s murder seemed a bit more at random but no less disgusting.
A lot younger and less famous than Eve – Lynne was just a school girl who was killed on her way home after 11pm in September of that year; after an evening out with friends Lynne was walking alone.
It is believed by detectives that she was followed on foot from the Great Western Road through an alleyway called The Short Hedges where she was bludgeoned and thrown into the grounds of an electrical substation (a common eyesore in urban England).
Lynne actually died a week later in hospital from her injuries which included blunt force trauma.
It wasn’t until the 21st Century that the two were eventually linked together as being committed by the same person which means that for over 40 years there has been a London Serial Killer that had fallen completely below the radar with two definite victims to his claim and more potentially linked.
While the British media may revel in glorifying these legendary gruesome figures of the night such as Jack the Ripper and Jack the Stripper ; we shouldn’t glamorise anybody capable of such foul intent by creating legends of elusive serial killers and we should focus on the real tragedy which was the innocent women’s lives being cut short in their prime just to serve the pathetic needs of a sadistic psychopath.
For better or for worse, this one flew completely under the radar of British media and their hysteria.
Detective Chief Inspector Andy Mortimer, from the Homicide and Serious Crime Command quoted in 2007 said: "Advances in forensic science mean that we are able to re-look at certain older cases with the very real possibility that some progress can be made that would not have been possible previously.
"As a result we now have a DNA link between the murders of Eve and Lynne, who was just 16 at the time of her death. We believe the killer could have confided in someone over the years about what happened or might even have bragged about the murders.
"They have kept a dark secret for the last 30 years and I'm sure they would have felt the need to share this burden with someone. We appeal to anyone who feels that they might have some information, however seemingly unimportant, to come forward."
Both murders featured on the iconic BBC show Crimewatch in 2007 when the Cold Case was re-opened.
It is extremely likely that the killer knew Eve and this was a strong hunch by detectives however with Lynne it may have been a moment born out of savage opportunism. However; despite new appeals opening up seemingly every decade there is nothing to note that stands out as having been revealed between the DNA discovery and present-day.
POTENTIAL THIRD – LYNDA FARROW
Lynda Farrow (a casino croupier) was pregnant at the time of her death. She was seemingly stabbed, with her head completely severed using a freezer knife. However; one thing that may rule out a connection to the other two is that the murder was not seemingly sexual.
A man was seen running from the area at the time that was in their late 30s, 5’9 wearing a donkey jacket and wellingtons. This occurred on Whitehall Road in Chingford and a Ford Cortina was seen departing Whitehall Road around the time of the murder.
From the description above I think we could rule out Lynda as being connected to the first two with people even suggesting the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe was linked to this crime (Yorkshire however is quite far from Chingford).
The Met Police offered a £20,000.00 reward in connection to solving this case back in 2009.
2020 VISION
These cases do not age well. The leads seem almost non-existent at present and despite the appearance of DNA, and as people begin to die or simply forget, closure on such cases seem nearly impossible. There is a strong reality that the killer himself is dead.
Two linked murders and a serial killer seemingly loose on 1975 London and it regrettably took forty years to even connect the killings and shed light on the fact that a serial killer had been walking the streets of London and getting away with it for such a long time.
While Britain has a lurid and disturbing history of crime and we have some of the most infamous serial killers on record; here was one operating in such a savage and predatory nature and nobody even knew that he existed.
However; in a world of increasing technological advancement and avid interests in True Crime – a day of reckoning may come for Eve, Lynne and Lynda.
BBC ARTICLE
DAILY MAIL
BLOG SPECULATION
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Aight retards, here's why I'm bullish on MGM making a comeback next few weeks:
- All the bad news is already behind us. Las Vegas is not shutting down again, period. The Las Vegas mayor went full retard on live TV insisting on re-opening no matter what. What does that mean? All the gambling addicts like us will coming rushing in before and after the Forth of July. Have you ever seen 70-year-old degenerates with breathing tubes up their noses at casinos? Have you ever seen crazies smoking cigarettes through face masks at slot machines? I have. If that doesn't stop them from coming to casinos, nothing will. MGM's earnings is also coming up on 07/23. Expect strong outlook.
- MGM is sitting on 4 billion cash. And according to a forbes article published today, MGM's price is extremely beaten up despite upbeat growth (https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/06/26/why-mgm-resorts-stock-has-lost-a-third-of-its-value-despite-upbeat-revenue-growth/#38d7e2ec5f35 ).
- AstraZeneca's September vaccine delivery is becoming a reality, exceeding 2.1 billion doses world-wide ( https://www.compuserve.com/news/story/0002/20200626/L4N2DT2Q6_1474850718 ). UK: 100 million does by Sep; US: 300 million doses by Otc; CEPI and GAVI wordwide reponse alliances: 300 millions before 2020.
TL'DR: MGM 07/17 $20C (really cheap, high volume, theta still low).