Barbara Walters, RIP

This was exactly the kind of job more interviewers could have done and should have done more often. She was sometimes underestimated, often imitated, but definitely a trailblazer for women in tv journalism and an inspiration to many. 

Greta and the Terrible Tate

 

I was vaguely aware of Andrew Tate before just a few days ago, mostly as a Terrible Influence for the Children--an openly misogynistic self-help toxic masculinist. I was very much aware of Greta Thunberg, who, although still a teen, has been the leader of a climate movement for years. So I very much understand what Andrew Tate was trying to do the other day by tagging her on his Tweet (from his recently-restored account under the new Regime) regarding his 30-something gas-guzzling cars--

He was seeking engagement with a higher profile account to get more engagement. It's what one does for more clicks, right? So, there he was, presumably tweaking a humorless scold liberal female on the social media when all of the sudden, she dunked on him. 

yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com https://t.co/V8geeVvEvg

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) December 28, 2022

It's a thing of beauty in its spare economy of words. He called her out, and she said he was an overcompensating try-hard who needed to "get a life".  And his knee-jerk response has to be noted for all time:

How dare you!?

Weak. Afflicted. Shooketh. Taken out at the knees. Pressure applied to the nerve center of a very small area. That wasn't supposed to happen. 

Hours later, he composed himself, got into his smoking jacket, acquired a cheroot of some sort, sought out a wood-paneled back drop and a big old pizza box, and made a calm, obviously not-trying-too hard and does-so have a life video to the effect that he doesn't have a small one, she has the small one. 

(Right. She has a small one, it's his, and it's in her trophy room in a match box.)

And any way this social media exchange gave Romanian authorities enough information to find him and pick him up for rape and human trafficking, because sometimes people who espouse horrific points of view on the internet are, actually, horrible people. 

And there ends the lesson.

I Feel Bad for Fatima Devolder

 

I don't know much about George Santos' mother other than what fact-checkers have had to debunk. Above, I posted a screenshot of two Tweets from George Santos about his mother's passing: that her life was claimed by 9/11 and that she had died in 2016. This doesn't strike me as so necessarily conflicted--of course, people who were near Ground Zero succumbed, even years later, due to disease from the toxic fallout of the rubble. If she contracted cancer from that, however later, it is just as much a case of 9/11 claiming her life as if she had passed when the Towers fell. 

Only--Santos says she was an executive working at a major financial institution, and it appears she was actually a domestic worker or home health aide. So how was she even there? Was she?

We can question whether his need for assistance with the burial matches his bio--and I will say, I believe he had financial problems.  I can see with my own eyes the struggle was real. But why did he have to lie so much about his mother? 

He concocted from nothing at all a story about her family and variously said she was from Belgium, or that her ancestors were Ukrainian Jews with the family name "Zabrovsky". He said his mother fled socialism in Belgium (which is not a socialist country) and also that his Ukrainian Jewish forebears fled the Holocaust because of socialism (because the whole "First they came for the socialists" thing is entirely lost on people whose life of the mind is entirely constructed of fables). 

George Santos, Caucasian, Jew-ish and Black (because he claims Angolan ancestry via his father) never seems to think his own story is good enough. Or that his own mother's story was good enough. He name-checks the Holocaust, 9/11 and even fabricated employees that died in the Pulse shooting as if only major events give meaning to one's life. 

His actual story, as a first-generation American who had a loving mother who protected him even though he was a check-stealing shit back in Rio de Janeiro, was not enough. That he now pretends he made a fortune just a minute ago in something he refers to as "capital introduction" can only make us wonder who introduced this ne'er-do-well to the kind of capital that finances a successful congressional campaign--and investigators are gonna be on it. (I always suspect Russians but Dark Money is a real thing, too.)

His lies about who he is and who she was fall around her--unable to say one word because she isn't alive to say her piece.  But I think she deserved better. Who she actually was should have been enough. 

UPDATE: Is he a chronic liar because he had a brain tumor or did he have a brain tumor because he's a chronic liar? 

3 years ago, he claimed he had a brain tumour and received chemo… pic.twitter.com/fBclHQjrps

— Ravin Boodram (@rvbdrm) December 29, 2022

How the whole hell?  I mean, how the whole hell? 

 

The Darkest Timeline 2022 Roundup

 

As with last year, I feel like providing a year in review for the blog, but this year, I noticed a certain trend and I did not like it one bit! But it is my blog, and sometimes you can't ignore the things you see--actually, you just shouldn't. 

January:  IOKIYAR, or the Republican Permission Structure.  There is a goal behind Republican rhetorical devices, and they are loaded.

February: AFPAC and CPAC are Like Peas and Carrots.  GOP-ers and Groypers are practically peas in a pod. 

March: The Country is Held Hostage by the Fifth Dentist. How did one side of our politics become so conspiracy-theory-ridden?

April: "Free Florida" and "Don't Say Gay". The GOP wants old school bigotry to have a comeback and I sure the hell don't. 

May: Jesus, Guns, Babies, American Exceptionalism.  Wow. boiled it all down to the maple syrup of the thing. 

June: Jesus , Guns, Babies, SCOTUS:  As the Bible had written, so conservative justices would likely try to have it done. 

July: Who is Paying for Dinner?  Just some reasonable thoughts about SCOTUS and ethics. 

August: But They Keep Admitting It, Though.  Supposedly mainstream conservatism has gone out of its way to support domestic terrorism. I do not think this is sarcasm. 

September: TWGB: Everything Looks Worse in Black and White.  Trumpism is fascism. It is. It looks bad because it is bad. 

October: Genocide as Peer Pressure.  Eliminationism is like a gruesome bandwagon. There are ugly people trying to normalize mass death of "suspect" populations. This is fascism. 

November: They *Do* Want us Dead.  More on the eliminationism.

December: TWGB: They Aren't Joking.  They say civil war and worse like they mean it, and I think they do. 

I don't like this timeline. But these are the posts I've got. 

The Jon Swift 2022 Roundup is All Present and Correct.

 

The blogosphere's faithful host of this year-end treat, Batocchio, has once again collected an engaging selection of blog posts from the year that was, as chosen by the blog authors themselves. It never fails to remind us of the value of the diverse voices of small blogs and the reason why we do the thing we do: because we can use our unique and sometimes specialized perspectives to cast a light on certain corners of our daily events and explain what we are seeing in a way mainstream journalism generally doesn't. 

Anyway, it's always a treat--like a sampler of candies you just have to bite into not knowing exactly what to expect but knowing they will be good. I never read through these posts without thinking about what a great community the left blogosphere is, and what a cool thing it is to get such a neat recap of its highlights. 

Go--treat yourself. It can take a few days to go through. But it is one of the most worthwhile internet traditions, and I'm happy one of my posts is a part of it. 

Is it a Bank Run? (UPDATED)

 

It certainly looks like there is a high demand for currency withdrawal, but maybe I'm just band wagoning. You could certainly see where the ruble could be in danger of being further devalued. They had been keeping heir interest rate steady--but will they continue to? And what about the rumor (only a rumor, I'm sure) that Russian depositors will see their savings converted to government bonds?

All I know is what I see on Twitter, and it would be very irresponsible for rumors that Russia's economy is about to pancake to widely and loosely spread. I think it would, however, be quite a story if a country that used propaganda about tightening energy supplies and rising costs in an attempt to weaken the resolve of their European neighbors who back Ukraine found itself in a vise between money-supply and buggered credit--

Meaning that Russians would have trouble paying to feed and heat themselves this winter as well.

UPDATE: You know, we can make jokes about Russia, like how so many oligarchs are falling out of windows that the new national anthem should be "It's Raining Men", but it isn't really funny when Dmitry Medvedev gets on Elon Musk's Twitter site to troll us with risible 2023 "predictions":

While making predictions for the forthcoming year, Medvedev further stated that Civil war will break out in the US, California as a result of which Texas will become an independent state.

He also added that Elon Musk will win the presidential election in a number of states, after the new Civil War end. Currently, Musk has been facing some criticism for major policy changes on the social media platform.

Taking to Twitter, the Russian official tweeted, "Civil war will break out in the US, California. and Texas becoming independent states as a result. Texas and Mexico will form allied states. Elon Musk will win the presidential election in a number of states which, after the new Civil War's end, will have been given to the GOP. All the largest stock markets and financial activity will leave the US and Europe and move to Asia."

It's fun to read about a prediction of US civil war and states seceding. It's a fun thing that Russian trolls promoted during the 2016 campaign.  That Russia has been using social media for influence campaigns against the west shouldn't be new.  But it strikes me as fascinating that steps taken by Twitter in 2020 to tamp down on disinfo are now being undermined by Musk and his pet "journos" as being some kind of overreach on the company's part in the "Twitter files". 

The Republicans who want to ignore what Trump calls "Russia, Russia, Russia" don't seem to be putting together that Ukraine, this war, and undermining the West's ability to stop Russian expansion is something they have been supporting and benefitting from.  Why else has Russia been trying to stuff money into the GOP anyway they can? 

The ones who actively have become Russian mouthpieces themselves (Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz) don't even seem to be ignoring it--they are onboard. How "America First" is that? 

I see support for Ukraine and opposition to Russia as being not just about European national security, but that of the US as well. 

And yes, I am rooting for a Russian collapse. 

The War on Christmas

 

It's Christmas Eve and about 50 migrants were dropped off in front of Kamala Harris' residence with the temperature in the teens. Another stunt by Greg Abbott. pic.twitter.com/wUjkxplYmB

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) December 25, 2022

You can tell me there was no room at the inn, but does anyone honestly mean to say there was no room--in Texas? Or was it only that in his fondness for the stranger (as even He had been a sojourner in Egypt), Governor Abbott felt it correct to send these people across a storm-thrown passage because he couldn't be sure he could keep the lights on for them?

 

Flies in the Vaseline 2: She Lost

 

Kari Lake at Mar-a-Lago: “I believe we won by 400,000 to 500,000 votes.” pic.twitter.com/VpdpC1qJds

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 23, 2022

She got her day in court, and her argument was found to be unpersuasive.  

A state judge on Saturday rejected Kari Lake’s last-ditch effort to overturn her defeat in the Arizona governor’s race, dismissing for lack of evidence her last two claims of misconduct by Maricopa County election officials.

The order by Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, after a two-day trial in Phoenix that ended Thursday, follows more than six weeks of claims by Ms. Lake, a Republican, that she was robbed of victory last month — assertions that echoed the false contention that was at the heart of her campaign: that an even larger theft had stolen the 2020 presidential election from Donald. J. Trump.

Her campaign has said it would appeal, and I would strongly suggest that they not do that, because it seems to me like sanctions would be a-comin' if they wanted to be that hard-headed. (It seems like the problem of trying to undermine faith in democracy is too serious a threat to call what they'd be doing actually "frivolous", but I can't imagine there's anything they have else to bring to the courtroom.)

But look where she has landed herself--if she just graciously thanked her campaign for all they did to support her in a relatively close gubernatorial contest and vow to continue to strive to participate in the civic life of Arizonans, maybe she would not look like the a smacked ass who ran around saying stuff like "They messed with the wrong bitch" and claiming she probably won it by a half million. 

It's a very unfiltered and unattractive look, right?  

I think it was very important for the process that she had been able to have her day in court and wildly not-prove her claims, and hope lessons are learned from this. I don't necessarily know that they will be the right lessons, but damnit, it feels like an educational opportunity.

UPDATED: Motion for sanctions against Kari Lake and her attorneys just dropped.  Lake should wake up--she may try to manipulate public opinion, but the courts are not the same.

TWGB: Here's the Report

 

The long-anticipated January 6th Committee Final report is out and it's here at this link.  At 800-something pages, it sounds like it would be pretty hefty, but you can blast past the copious footnotes just to get the narrative of the thing--and of course, if you watched the televised hearings, you already know a lot of what it in there. 

The bottom line is: everything comes down to the former president--but we knew that. TrumpWorld knew it too--they protected Trump. Take the odd case of former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson's legal counsel, who definitely was interested in her protecting Trump, not in her best legal interests. As in, that's point blank what he said:

“We just want to focus on protecting the president,” Ms. Hutchinson recalled Stefan Passantino, a former Trump White House lawyer who represented her during her early interactions with the committee, telling her.

There's probably a lot of that going around. It's been likened to mob lawyers and I don't see a problem with the analogy. 

I'm seeing some complaints from people who've blogged or reported on the events surrounding the 1/6 insurrection who are concerned about what the report doesn't show, but I think there has to be a limit to how many rabbit holes one wants to jump in and the committee had to pick and choose between things that could actually be usefully examined and addressed. How do you solve a problem like, for example Ginni Thomas? 

I'm not sure there was a good recommendation, there. Same with trying to tease out what can be revealed from all those folks who plead the fifth or thought that contempt was the better part of valor. 

To me, the most interesting parts are left for the end of the report, the sections labeled Appendix Three, The Big Rip-Off: Follow the Money and Appendix Four, Malign Foreign Influence. This is because the two recurring themes I come back to over and over again is that Trump is a confidence trickster, and that Putin's government wants the US owned by a confidence trickster. Trump encouraged his faithful little marks to give their money to a scheme to undermine this country. Trump gets to use that money for his legal expenses, they, for their part, get to participate in sedition. 

The RNC, and many GOP elected, had only been too happy to go along with a swindle that they had to know was not true. Trump himself knew he had lost and admitted as much. Fox News, one of the biggest spreaders of the voter fraud fertilizer and now facing a defamation lawsuit, has had their on-air personalities admit they knew better.  I don't for a minute think that the Republican congress people (not even Gohmert, Gosar, Greene, etc.) cared what was true. 

But at what cost to national security? Because you can't support a divisive fraud and not weaken us a country. One of my major premises has been that if you accept that Putin supports Trump (and vice versa) you also have to accept that you are no longer putting America first, because there simply is no reason to believe that Putin gives one shit about the best interests of the US. It's far more likely he is against them. 

This is why I have likened the GOP in the TWGB series to sunshine patriots that talk boldly of their love of country but run like Josh Hawley when asked to do one actual tough thing to defend it--or rather, a thing that wouldn't even be so tough, only scrupulous. It's also why I grit my teeth at the claim that no Republicans "of good standing" were on the committee, when apparently the price of that good standing was fealty to a bloody-minded fraud. 

The Santos Clause

 

Imagine the wonderland this country is, because only here can a scrappy self-made grifter wake up one day going from bouncing rent checks to being a Wall Street success, achieve a good, solid education, run a charity, never experience discrimination as a gay person (probably because of being straight-married until just before running for office) with an incredible backstory of being descended from Holocaust survivors. 

You can even largely self-fund your campaign for congress, or maybe, just with a lot of Russian oligarch money. 

Yes. A GOP candidate probably backed with Russian oligarch money who does not seem to be the guy he represents himself as. 

People can point fingers at whether the Democrats did enough oppo research or whether the local news media looked hard enough at this guy's campaign, but can we just admit that it's no accident someone like this crops up in the GOP?

Zelenskyy and the Free World

 

Ukraine President Volodymir Zelenskyy sat with both President Joe Biden today as well as spoke before the US Congress, and he represented his country and their struggle against the invasion and persistent oppression by Russia with sincerity and a good understanding of the culture and respect for the audience he was appealing to, He spoke about the fight Ukrainians are facing this winter--this Christmas, to have a light against the darkness of Russian totalitarianism. And me, I admired how a Ukranian Jewish man turned the struggle against Russia from a mostly Christian nation into a story about Christian rebellion against oppression, and paralleled the festival of lights with our Christian solstice story. 

Because we all must know--the light must survive. We preserve what is meaningful and good against the dark, the winter, the time of trial and tribulation.  We all understand the context of freedom versus oppression, the same as we understand the story of David versus Goliath. We know in our guts that there is a life worth fighting for, and sometimes it is even a life worth sacrificing against a regime that wants the deaths of so many of your compatriots. 

And because I love freedom, and hate oppression, I want to castigate the Zelenskyy haters, the Ukraine-averse, the oppositional defiant fuckfaces and kneejerk contrarians who see virtual genocide--the bombings of schools and maternity hospitals, and still think--maybe mad Vlad is still our political dad. And who venttheir oppostion to free Ukraine by challenging Zelenskyy's outfit, like he wasn't a world leader trying to rep his people at war and respect their privations by not wearing a suit. 

A degenerate former KGB guy who came to power with a murderous false flag and has formed alliances with Iran and Syria while encroaching on liberated former territories for fun and profit is their guy? Like, what the entire fuck? What do people like Thomas Massie, Andrew Clyde, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and even Kevin Fucking McCarthy even believe about the balance of world powers? 

Keystone Problems

 

U.S. pipeline regulator reviewing special permits after Keystone oil spills -source https://t.co/QOLs8JNV2O pic.twitter.com/Ghi2ZJkKLk

— Reuters (@Reuters) December 21, 2022

This is the third spill in five years. It's spilling into Kansas Mill Creek. 

Operators were alerted to an issue with the pipeline on Dec. 7. As of Friday morning, TC Energy says, 4,125 barrels of oil from the creek have been recovered of the estimated 14,000 barrels (about 588,000 gallons) reportedly lost in the spill.

Aerial footage of the leak from Nebraska Public Media shows the leak has affected a nearby pasture and residents' farmland.

Many initial details, like the cause for the spill, are still not clear. What is known is the type of oil that was being transported through the pipeline: tar sands oil, also called diluted bitumen.

Because it's tar sands oil, it's thick and hard to clean up. (It's not easy to convert to gasoline for this reason, too.)

Republicans have been blaming Biden for cancelling further work on the project and claiming it had anything to do with higher energy costs this year (it doesn't--at all)--but this hammers home why this kind of pipeline is a problem: we don't eat or drink oil, and this kind of spill can damage farmland and poison water. For years, my objection to it has been that it runs too close to the Ogallala aquifer, right in the nation's breadbasket. 

Anyway, when Republicans want to start in on Keystone XL--the pipeline that runs through the US to ship Canadian oil for export and complain that Democrats hate cheap energy, I think my response is something along the lines of what my dad told me when he despaired of the sloppy condition of my room. He said, "Only a sick animal shits where it eats." 

That probably won't make a dent in the hard heads of people who doubled-down on "Drill here, drill now" after the Deepwater Horizon spill. But I don't know how much more obvious the keystone problems have to be.

TWGB: The New Territory

 

The January 6 Committee has referred Trump (and others) to the DOJ for a swath of crimes unimaginable. But the thing I want to direct you to is what I have always seen as the main problem: Trump furthering a conspiracy to make false statements and also to defraud the US. The takeaway had to be--the big lie (That significant voter fraud existed) is over--it was never true. 

Trump of course lies. Like he breathes. The voter fraud thing was the kind of lie that known liars should have known to check--but they didn't care, did they? 

Anyway, his lies are so done that we will even see his tax returns. Which weren't even under audit. Which is one thing he fraudulently claimed. 

No former president has ever been treated this way. But then again, no other president ever needed to be. He's in new territory because he engaged a whole new dimension of crimes and misdemeanors.  He'll surely blame everyone under the sun, but it all comes back to himself.

Main Character Assassination Coordinates, I Think?

 

So, I'm trying to understand the problem of Elon Musk and his disastrous turn as the head of Twitter, which I think he didn't really want and hardly knows what to do with, and I come back to the meme of the "Main Character" of Twitter. Elon Musk became the main character of Twitter by buying it, but the point of the parable of the main character is that every day there is one, and you should not be it. And yet, Musk offered himself up not to just manage Twitter as a free speech absolutist who hates the things people say, but to possibly fuck it up beyond all recognition. 

I have to think so from the way he's been doing things. If his fucking it all up isn't purposeful, I'd have to think he was actually quite dumb. And that's a very mean thing to think, isn't it? After all, his mum tells us he's very clever, and that has to account for something, yeah?

I just want to point out for posterity that almost every sensible bullied kid from the jump has understood that absolutely nothing would be made better by one's mom dipping her oar in to promote the idea that one's baby is *so* very clever and good. It is absolutely the genesis of another degree of roasting. 

But here's the fun part--Mr. Free Speech banned talking about the obvious diaspora going on by Twitterstans hauling off to Post and Mastodon and Tribel and all of them. Except Parler, TikTok and some other glaring omittances. Anyhow, he admitted there was a drift to bankruptcy going on with the social media site he sort of forced himself to take on. 

And it most definitely is affecting his other business concerns. And his falling Tesla stock is not just a happy accident regarding his poor stewardship of Twitter. It's about Tesla issues, as well. It just takes a push to realize that sometimes a genius isn't actually the savant one wants them to be. 

Anyway, he fronted that the problem with the journos he banned was doxxing him--revealing his "assassination coordinates". Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, really? Anyway, his personal story of dangerous doxxedology got realtime debunked.  

So, what is the main character to do now?

Post a poll to determine how to exeunt stage terminal main character, that's what. 

I actually will link this to Twitter because in my hope of hopes, Google snipes the off-cost social media shoulda been and we have a SM that is less evil. Of course, I'd settle for Mad Monk Dorsey again. I don't trust Musk and think he's screwing shit up on purpose as a possible provocateur. He wants the disinfo people, the Nazis, the illegitimate dialogue, the fuckery. He showed his pasty ass. But he can't be the main character on Twitter and still be Space X and Tesla fronting. He can't. What is more valuable? He has to get back to where, as the Beatles put it, he once belonged. What makes him money. 

I'm still not leaving. He's the one who sucks. 

Night of Elon Knives

 

So, I can co-exist with the best of them, and I won't Tweet this link out on Twitter because I think I understand the new rules, but apparently, if you are a journalist who mentions Elon Musk, Twitter isn't your home anymore. 

Now, it feels kind of thin-skinned, and it is. After all, Musk once talked about something like free speech maximalism, and this is definitely not that. 

He took not his worst critics, but his truest critics, and shat them out the airlock. Maybe he didn't want them to leave voluntarily--but he was fine with them getting bounced. 

Of course, the right wing folks he's been sucking up to love this, because they don't understand the terms of service, they just think that if conservatives anywhere get banzored, then liberals everywhere should be banzored. How else would life be fair? It doesn't sit right with me because I was following basically all of those guys and they were doing the work. 

Now, I have no social media skills (nor 44 billion to buy social media skillz, amirite?) so I don't think I'm big enough to get bounced for my lil Elon parody songs, or whatevs.  But there's the principle of the thing--do I stay when free speech is no longer the point, when the conversation palls, when the party isn't over, but the hosts are worn out and the food sucks?

Yeah, I stay. I don't quit Twitter, it quits me. Because I was here before Musk took over. Because I was a bullied queer kid and am used to hostile environments. Because Musk came to journalism central and tried to gatekeep truthtellers in a world where we all have been gatekept by the dastardliest. 

He had knives out for some of our best--and will need to expect people to want to do their worst. 

He will shut down the servers before he shuts down this roast. Because we operate this spit and the coals and Elon is very high profile and very roastable. He doesn't have a discourse, the discourse has him. 

That's the parasocial relationship Musk developed with actual hyperliterate assholes. It was a bad idea. We like Mars and electric cars, but we will find options. Will he? 

Trump's Major Announcement is Super Cringe

 

When the former president said he had a major announcement coming up today, the mind reeled: what constitutes "major"? Could it be he was offering himself for Speaker of the House in case Kevin McCarthy couldn't get the votes? Was he announcing a very premature running mate pick? Did it have to do with his campaign?

And it was none of the above--just a commercial for a fun new grift: NFTs! Or as I like to think of them, Magic JPEGS. It's the kind of thing that literally never goes down in value. You know, because it's kind of hard to put a value on a thing like that.

Anyway, maybe it isn't something thunderously important in the political world, but it is something the Trump family already knows a little bit about, as Melania Trump had her own NFT offerings earlier this year. Also, in a world of Trumpy Bears and Trump commemorative coins, why shouldn't Trump capitalize on his own digitized, Photoshopped likeness?

And of course, the intent is to make money:

While the purchase of a Trump digital card enters one into a sweepstakes to win a prize (like a round of golf or Zoom call with Trump) which is definitely a thing he did with his fundraising stuff--this is all Trump profit. 

That's one way to pay the bills, I guess. 

Who is the likely Trump NFT customer? Marks.  Obvs.

Anyway, the images are really quite something:

Which makes me wonder how I can get in on this:

UPDATE: They sold out in 12 hours. If I understand the elements of this hustle, there will be a new offering of NFT's at a higher price point and an underlying "ACT  NOW!" urgency. Still very interested in who the "customers" are, and to what extent access to Trump is a part of the exchange. 

Rudy Giuliani, True Believer Part 2

 

It just isn't right that I'm posting about how this dripping clown was running a whole election fraud circus, but here we are. He was a true believer in trying to find dirt on the Bidens, and he went on to be a true believer about voter fraud. He basically lived in a state of improv--always saying "Yes!" 

And he needed money. He never got any from Trump, though. Even when he literally worked until the hair dye ran down his face.

Anyway, Giuliani stays loyal and still isn't paid. I don't even think the mob does low level guys that harsh. He made his bones, he did his job (poorly, poorly) but he isn't a rat and he sticks with the story. 

Trump never pre-emptively pardoned him and still seems cold. This is TrumpWorld's reward.

UPDATE: It's been determined that Giuliani violated at least one ethics rule and the DC bar recommends disbarment. But in the course of it, Giuliani still says he thought Trump won. Even now, though, he doesn't seem to grasp that never bothering to check whether his assertions were true before litigating them is kind of a big deal. Especially when a democracy depends on caring about that sort of thing. 

TWGB: They Aren't Joking

 

There's a funny thing about Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that if she and Steve Bannon were at the head of the 1/6 insurrection, they would have won, and they would have been armed: she says she was joking, now. But she certainly was not.  We know this because we know her record. She was explicit about what she stood for--talking about "the price of blood" pre-election.  We know in December 2020 she was at the White House meeting with other GOP electeds. We know some 1/6 insurrectionists actually were armed.  What she seems to be saying, and pretending to walk back, is that she would want more bloodshed of Capitol police and possibly her own colleagues in congress. 

Ha ha. The conservatives are getting better at humor, and the libs don't like it, indeed. (See latest iteration thereof.)  Actually, we know what "only joking" means to fascists. (Can't you take a joke? Why are you punching yourself? I'm not the problem, you have no sense of humor. etc.)

When the NY Young Republicans, who I used to think were just twenty-somethings who looked like forty somethings and had the values of the 1950s and wanted to undo the civil rights movement, has VDARE's Brimelow and Posobiec, I start to think we've got people in their thirties and forties who look like they are traitors and have the values of would-be herrenvolk and want to undo Reconstruction. 

So, color me pretty alarmed by that. Also alarmed by Justice Kavanaugh hanging out with the Schlapps, you know, the CPAC wanna-be domestic terrorist Orban enthusiasts. Just a Supreme Court justice hanging out in the most partisan and kinda-fash-leaning crowd, and we're supposed to shrug about that? (And shouldn't RW SCOTUS justices be more on guard about their propriety since we know they are cozy as hell with activists? I mean, Clarance Thomas' wife is a whole activist, which is as cozy as things get.)  

It isn't a joke. 

Giuliani, True Believer

 

Rudy says Sean Hannity, John Solomon, Bill Barr and Mike Pompeo betrayed Trump by suppressing and helping to cover up the Hunter laptop story in 2019-2020 when he brought it to them. pic.twitter.com/VHEZSdPlCk

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) December 13, 2022

You know, I am cynical. But take the "two watches" thing: I think there could be something badly wrong with Giuliani, and I'm not actually just riffing off of his claims that other people are actually old/sick/nuts/dying.  None of the above people named: Hannity, Solomon, Barr, or Pompeo, were actively hostile to pitching anti-Biden disinfo. From the first impeachment, we know very well that all the above-named were on board with the search for Biden dirt.

John Solomon, who was featured on Hannity with his fabulist takes, was found by The Hill to be pushing poorly sourced and misleading bullshit--that mostly came from Rudy Giuliani. For their part, Barr admitting he was accepting information from Giuliani, and Mike Pompeo disagreed with the narrative that Hunter Biden's laptop was a Russian disinfo op. 

They weren't disagreeable to what Giuliani was pushing out, necessarily. But take where Barr ended up on that score: he wasn't going to go out of his way to endorse a dodgy product. I think all of these Trump supporters realized there has to be a morning after and there's a little thread of credibility you need to keep for yourself. And maybe they didn't like what they were smelling from Giuliani. 

And also, maybe Hunter Biden just sues your whole ass off if you are wrong. 

Giuliani is all in. Other people might want to have lives after Trump. Giuliani is this guy. Some gimmick is getting Trump back in office, and maybe, maybe, Giuliani won't even be an unpaid lawyer for Trump anymore and won't have to go without a pardon in his pocket. 

A guy can dream, right? AG Giuliani in Trump's second term. Loyalty paid off. (And it will never happen.) 

And needless to say, if Kevin McCarthy wants to go all in on hearings for the intelligence community professionals who signed a letter saying they didn't think the laptop story sounded kosher--he might just be airing why people who know what they are talking about think TrumpWorld is horrific for national security by politicizing every fucking thing without weighing actual national interest and truth concerns. 

The Twitter Follies

 

I am more or less accusing Elon Musk of tooling his $44B vanity buy to the "audience of one" called Trump--and I have no idea why. The so-called "Twitter Files" revolve around the supposed suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the eventual removal of Trump's Twitter account post-1/6, and in both cases, the decision-making doesn't seem to have been particularly biased, but concerned for whether the social media company was behaving responsibly with respects to evolving situations--in one case, a potential disinformation threat by foreign actors with the intent of influencing a US election, and in the other, a homegrown domestic terrorism plot apparently headed by that country's very own lame duck leader. 

There's no great reason to produce Trump-centric content now, is there? The man is old and beat and twice-impeached and I don't think the smart money is on his line.  He's just a balance sheet of lawsuits and liabilities from here on out. He's what you might call a spent force. 

And after promoting the dimmest possible voter fraud stories, now the Chiclet-headed former supposed leader of the free world is on his probably-an-SEC-scam Truth Social, acting like the way he was treated by social media was the biggest scandal of all time, and maybe the suppression of the laptop story was what really cost him his second term. 

Welcome Home, Brittney Griner

 

I want you to know that Brittney Griner cut her locs because it was so cold in detention in Russia that her hair couldn't be washed--it would freeze. I can not imagine what she suffered as a queer woman of color in detention in a place of pure hostility to everything about her, but I am so glad she has come home. She has come home to her wife, and a country that should value her because she represents us--America the Beautiful. The Brave. 

This is a woman who was imprisoned for an amount of hash solely for management of having a body that does stuff. It very well would be treated as medicinal here. She is not what we could consider a drug addict or a dealer. Just an occasional ad lib user because bodies sometimes need an assist for relaxation. 

Some people want to pit the existence and freedom of this athlete against some straw human--or make a straw human out of Paul Whelan, who Russia insists is some kind of spy. 

I don't understand how getting an American home is supposed to be wrong. I am happy this woman is home. 

UPDATE: Conservatives who are critical regarding her release seem to have the wrong idea that getting Whelan released was an option President Biden had but rejected. Actually, it was an option former president Trump had when he was in office but rejected. Just to clear that up. 

What's Up with Senator Sinema?

 

Look, like David S. Pumpkins, she's her own thing, okay? She seems to have come up with an elegant solution to being primaried when Democrats just aren't that into her and feels she achieves some kind of bipartisan cred thing that, frankly, I don't understand. 

And I won't. So, since it doesn't change the composition of the Senate, I frankly don't give a damn. If she can make it work and somehow not screw with the Democratic party agenda, that would be great. 

It feels like she could have been more of a team-player to start with, but it's totally her call what she does now, so I don't have one mean thing to say. 

To Love and Be Loved

 

Today the Respect For Marriage Act passed the House, and it's not perfect, but given that DOMA wasn't so long ago, it does mean things have changed. The "defense" of marriage then meant defending straight marriages--which never had been threatened by same-sex marriage at all. The weird hue and cry against marriage equality was that by some evil voodoo, queer people gaining some measure of security and happiness would take it away from straight people. 

This was always dumb. How? How would it do that? Why would anyone argue something so irrelevant? 

But let's dwell for a minute on the tears of Frau Hartzler. 

As I presided over the debate for the Respect for Marriage Act, I had to remind Republicans like Vicky Hartzler their time for debate expired.

For too long, Republicans have tried to stop a full vision of marriage equality in America.

Their time has expired. pic.twitter.com/gDNgsbWWXj

— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) December 8, 2022

This woman had the nerve to be verklempt that other people would have their right to pursue happiness protected because it made her feel less safe to be a bigot, and she shed real tears begging others to show the courage of their bigotry, too. She felt like her religion and worldview were damaged by others' acceptance of queer relationships in defiance of whatever she thinks "the true meaning of marriage" is.  The thought of it cramps her privilege--to be married according to whatever her biblical view says and also to deny that security to others. 

TWGB: It's Bad

 

The conviction of the Trump Organization for 17 counts of assorted tax fraud charges is, to put it mildly, a bit of a setback for the presidential candidacy of former president Donald J. Trump, although of course, he's appealing it. And we can look back and note that the sad ends of Trump University and the Trump Foundation didn't scathe Trump's image as a successful (and definitely not a con artist) businessman. (They totally should have.) It's hard to say that what should be a bit of a (to use a term) legal coup against a corrupt real estate scion is even the beginning of the end of Trump--the man, the myth, the mofo. 

But why not say it is? Because whatever is going down around him--it isn't good. 

I wonder about little gestures in TrumpWorld, like the revelation that Trump's lawyers have a team investigating whether there were still classified government documents to be found on Trump properties, and while they did find a couple in a storage unit, they are pretttttttyyy sure Trump's usual haunts are clean. 

My favorite bit is where the FBI decline to watch the search:

The team also offered the FBI the opportunity to observe the search, but the offer was declined, the people said. It would be unusual for federal agents to monitor a search of someone’s property conducted by anyone other than another law enforcement agency. Federal authorities have already searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s primary residence, and he spends almost all of his time at those three properties, advisers say.

They would like to watch a search at Trump Tower or Bedminster, is my guess, but doing it when expected is not how this is going to go down.  I just have the vague suspicion that this story is Team Trump trying to get out in front of something.  I mean, Trump;s lawyers say he's got all the clasified docs out of his sstem but they've been wrong before, right? 

This is a Victory Today.

 

Thank you, Georgia. We did it again. pic.twitter.com/jikuO5Kt8S

— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) December 7, 2022

I am so pleased that the good people of Georgia saw their way through and voted for a good man over whatever Herschel Walker is. You have a good senator and escaped a whole strata of nonsense. It's a triumph of competence over heavy partisan promotion.

UPDATE: Here's a pretty good recap of the 2022 Georgia Senate race, but I do have a bone to pick:

Mr. Walker’s loss will almost certainly lead to soul-searching for a Republican Party that must decide heading into the 2024 election how firmly to tether itself to a former president who has now absorbed powerful political blows in three successive campaign cycles. 

"Almost certain"?  You would think so, you really would, but counterpoint, even if they do, how honest is the party willing to be about their messaging and their appetite for "Celebrity Apprentice" candidates like Walker and Dr. Oz? 

In other things the GOP should re-think: prioritize getting people to vote over complaining about voter fraud. (After all--where has election-denial gotten them?)

As for Democrats--the takeaway should be to run as Democrats and form coalitions of voters who are motivated by the promise of good government and dedication. But Warnock's still-close win feels like it is in many ways more attributable to an impossibly awful Republican candidate in a state which, even with two Democratic senators, is still so red.  

Herschel Walker in the House

 

Sometimes when we want to define a thing, we ask "What do you call it when it is at home?" If you wanted to define Herschel Walker (recognizing his pronoun is not that of a "thing" even if he proclaims no understanding of what a pronoun is) , I can tell you readily what to call Herschel Walker when he is at home:

A Texan. 

But the real reason I'm envisioning Walker in his house is because that is where he seems to be envisioning himself. In the basically tied US House (or Senate--hard to say):

In a brief interview with POLITICO on Saturday, Walker seemed to mistake which chamber of Congress he was running for and also appeared to think the outcome of his race would determine control of the Senate.

“They’re not [less motivated] because they know right now that the House will be even so they don’t want to understand what is happening right now,” he said of voters. “You get the House, you get the committees. You get all the committees even, they just stall things within there. So if we keep a check on Joe Biden, we just going to keep a check on him.”

This is a C- effort on a Civics quiz. It's a whole F as far as someone actually running for the Senate goes. As in W. T. F.

 He really does not seem to know what he's running for. And yet, I still think (while I'm optimistic for Warnock) this will be close and it's a shame that Warnock has to be purely exemplary, and a Republican can go ahead and be...this. 

Rudy Knows What Time It Is

 

At the conclusion of the morning session of his Bar disciplinary hearing, Rudy tells his lawyer on a hot mic that he mistakenly put two watches on today. pic.twitter.com/v1SJGdVtZt

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) December 5, 2022

Did he do it by mistake? We joke about whether the guy who turned up dripping shoe polish from his head, made a speech at Four Seasons landscaping, and crop-dusted his co-counsel Jenna Ellis with COVID-19 by way of farticle is ever sober or has permanently lost his grip, but this display was so watch-movement obvious it sort of looked to me like at some point, he's just gonna tell folks he's a frail old man out of his mind and never meant to do any kind of coup. And this was just part of the warm-up.

It would be a very sad card to play after what he's said about Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden alike, is all. But fine--he's a constant drunk and a major incompetent--and the guy Trump was listening to in the White House as his very important unpaid lawyer for years. 

Think about that!

Look! A Shark!

 

For some reason, James Woods is threatening to sue the DNC for trying to take down his deeply meaningful Twitter post about Hunter Biden's penis because it retroactively got "Shark" cancelled and made him terribly unpopular, even if he was brilliant at playing such diverse roles as Byron De La Beckwith, Rudy Giuliani, and the sleazy boyfriend of the wife in Casino. 

Except I guess he was kind of like just being himself in roles as gross people?  Maybe just being extended universe versions of the smarmy AP teacher in Welcome Back Kotter isn't sustainable. Maybe too many anecdotes about being abusive existed. 

Anyway, I don't think the DNC is to blame for him not getting the same kind of roles as he used to at his age. I don't even understand how the take-down of a post violating Twitter's TOS undermines his whole entire career. 

I guess they rigged his votes.  That must be it. 

TWGB: How is Trump Doing Today?

 

If your answer to the titular question is "ready to set fire to the Constitution", then yay! You got it in one. Today's manic post on Truth Social reads:

So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great "Founders" did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!

So, I guess he's unhappy?

Now, far be it for me to put words into the mouths of the "Founders" (what is with Trump and the quotation marks?), but our elected officials swear an oath to the Constitution because without laws, we don't have a government, but anarchy. You might even say, if we throw out the Constitution, we "wouldn't even have a country," to use the refrain uttered by Trump and other "Flight 93 election" folks on the right.

It sounds like. once again, Trump is spouting a little too much "truth". Just as he acknowledged taking classified documents transparently, he is now telling us that he wants laws broken to restore him to office. He knows there's no Constitutional basis for any kind of a do-over. but it doesn't matter--he wants another chance and quickly.

It seems like this post coincides with the "revelation" of supposed Biden campaign-influenced suppression on social media of Hunter Biden stories in the "Twitter files" Elon Musk dropped last night. The funny old thing is--there isn't a there, there. To the extent there was any government influence, this happened during the Trump Administration, so whose government was it?  And many career IC officials felt, from experience, the Hunter Biden laptop story should be distrusted because it looked like disinfo.

Experience like the foreign disinfo campaign that went hard in 2016. In favor of Trump.  

It also coincides with another bad week for Trump in the courts,  As in:

Five members of the Oath Keepers were convicted for serious felonies relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that the former president instigated. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows must testify in Georgia’s criminal investigation into his attempt to overturn the state’s results. And a federal judge denied Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity from civil suits.

And people are still talking about how his friend Ye is having a very public racist meltdown. And also, Pat Cipolone and Patrick Philbin testified before a grand jury Friday and an appellate court dismissed "Loose" Cannon's Special Master ruling. And the Ways and Means Committee has six years of Trump's tax returns. And the Trump Organization fraud case goes to a jury on Monday...

I'm sure Trump is writing a new Constitution on the Mar-A-Lago walls in ketchup at this point. 

But as the old saw about "taking Trump literally or seriously" goes, we've seen by now--after 1/6? I take him very seriously and literally. He definitely is encouraging the breaking of laws to get him reinstalled in office. That's why he has shown so much solidarity lately with those arrested and tried for their participation in the 1/6 insurrection. 

He still means to do terrible harm to this country, and that people still support him is appalling.