Maybe I Have This Twisted

 

Last night, I had the stupidity to forget how kiss-up, punch-down hierarchies work because I have never actually lived in a fully corrupted banana republic before. My dumb ass posted: 

And DOGE undermining the social safety net and intimating that Medicare and Social Security need big cuts is actually very bad? 

Because of course that is--but his antipathy to democracy at all is also really bad. 

I think it gets worse from here for Musk.. And I think I like it that way. As he starts to sink and stink, Trump will cut ties, because that's how he rolls. 

Except that was dumb, because if Trump truly believes he is post-"elections matter", well, he no longer has to care about whether people hate Elon. He just has to protect the guy who can easily dump $100M into his PAC (slush fund). 

Joe Six-Pack with the retirement fund and a MAGA hat isn't his main concern. Elon SuperPAC donor is.

Ergo, he turned the front of the White House into a sales lot for Tesla and cut a promo. They are cutting the Board of Education, Veteran's medical access, Social Security functionality as a whole thing, IRS (the revenue-finders!) and so on, but the White House had to help rescue one stock today.

The DOW lost many points. Tesla had a little unreality rally. Also, too, Trump declared folks vandalizing Tesla dealerships were "domestic terrorists."  

Let me get this straight. Pardon the idjits who attacked the Capitol with great violence on 1/6/2021 but the people protesting Tesla are the real villains against the US? 

TrumpWorld is Riding Until the Wheels Come Off

 

Just so we are clear, when the GOP hit the TrumpWorld Trifecta--they motioned to keep riding the 2025/47 Agenda until the wheels came off. Apparently, though, the vehicle they have chosen is a Cybertruck, so the wheels will come off sooner rather than later.  (Panels, also, too!)  

Best of luck to the State Department on that Tesla contract. Ride in the best of health and luck, which you will need. 

Yes, I am comparing TrumpWorld right now to the Swasticar, 

Musk has fouled the brand of the companies he acquired because of being a wealthy dumbass, not founded because he's not actually what he represents himself as. I don't know why his Frankendick still gets ridden like it is. But it's clearly made up of dead to the game actual founders, who took Elon's money and decided they were good with him doing his thing to their brands.

The Jebbening! of Ron DeSantis

 

pic.twitter.com/H7G6q4TtKq

— Secular Talk🎙 (@KyleKulinski) May 25, 2023

You know, I love the sunny optimism of people who want to push the theory that Ron DeSantis will most surely fail because he's a weird fucking glitchy AI trained on Orwell as a handbook and White Christian supremacy as a goal who sort of can't stand like a man who has always had arms and regularly unhinges his mouth when he laughs like he's about to devour a sacrificial goat. I mean, sure, all that is really off-putting, but if one has the backing of enough big money donors and is somehow the largest tool in the shed after the other big tool gets majorly law-hammered (because the conviction of Trump for anything at all and legal removal from the primary pool springs eternal in the minds of those who have engaged in the contest--although they would never, never say something so obvious aloud) who you gonna settle with? 

I see Stupid People, But They Don't Know They're Stupid

 

Musk doubles down on his claims that there's no evidence the Allen, Texas mall shooter had white supremacist beliefs, and that @bellingcat "does psy-ops" professionally. pic.twitter.com/60yvbbspYZ

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) May 16, 2023

Do the big fucking Nazi tattoos confuse Elon, here? Because to the extent we have a potential motive, it looks like this shithead was fucked up about Asians. Also, Musk wants to pretend his weird Twitter obsession is somehow like Inigo Montoya but I don't think Elon's father got killed by the woke mind virus or he's doing anything especially brave by being a shitposter. An actually shit, shitposter. 

The Gaga Saga of Scott Adams, MAGA

 

The funny thing about Scott Adams is, he had a really good thing--he did satire about office politics and stuff that was mostly unstupid. Managers that didn't understand the technology or the mission, and rules that were made for the institution, not the individual workers, were very relatable, and made for a cool syndicated cartoon berth that also generated dollars from swag like mugs and calendars--the kind of things worker bees had in their cubicles. 

And he also got to write books about other stuff--like how he thought Donald Trump was a winner--and that's not a big deal. People can have their politics after all--big, free country. No one cancelled him for being a Trump fan. It's cynical to say Trump wins because facts don't matter to him and then like him for that very reason, but whatever. 

Scott Adams defended Trump regarding his apparent support for the white supremacists in Charlottesville, by claiming he never really said the thing everyone absolutely understands him to have said. Didn't get cancelled for that, though. 

He also was full of shit when he said that, because he also was mad at Trump for continuing to say it. 

This particular kind of thing is called "right-fighting". He'd rather people concede that he is right than actually get right. 

The Oversight Committee's Essential Business--Hunter Biden's Cock.

 

The job of the Oversight Committee is, per their web page: 

Our mission statement is to ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government and all its agencies. We provide a check and balance on the role and power of Washington - and a voice to the people it serves. 

Genuinely good government requires a commitment to expose waste, fraud, and abuse. We ultimately report to hard working taxpayers to ensure their investment in government is spent effectively, efficiently, and transparently. 

We identify problems, shine light on the situation, and propose reforms to prevent abuses from being repeated.

And this is somehow why this body grilled former Twitter employees about why there was a 24-hour suppression of a story that people could still see outside of Twitter, and also why pictures of naked Hunter Biden were taken down at the request of the Biden campaign. Look back up at that mission statement. They are supposed to be looking at waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. And they are instead looking into how a corporation might have blocked a story favorable to Trump's political campaign? How does that protect the American taxpayer from government abuse?

Ha! It doesn't! This hearing was actually about using the House process (funded by taxpayer dollars) to further Republican conspiracy theories--an actual example of waste, fraud and abuse. Literally doing the thing the committee is supposed to expose. And yet, ironically, it was exposed! Or to quote Rep. Gery Connolly: “My, my, my. What happens when you hold a hearing, and you can’t prove your point?”

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? 

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. 

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.

Crimea Bridge is an Object Lesson

 

Before we get into the inevitable ruckus about who invaded who and committed war crimes from the jump, I would like to use the blog's time to issue a shout-out to (checks notes) Puddin' who is 70 psychopathic years old, and the object of affection of fellow psychos everywhere from Chechnya to Syria, from Mar-A-Lago to Englewood. 

Now, if, like myself, you admire the grit and ingenuity of the Ukrainian people and as a matter of human rights, support their basic right to self-defense, you can't help but look at the flaming birthday candles just about a week from Putin's appalling overreach and ask yourself: Does this look like a man with a plan?

He is not. He is not a genius.  He wasn't goaded into the invasion by the US at all but was warned off of it. And absolutely everything Mike Flynn says about Russia at the moment has to be understood as proof who of pulls his actual strings. This is a man so bought as to warn off all potential customers because he's spoiled for them, a man whose only honor seems to be adherence to blaming America First. (Only the religious right in this country could stomach him, because they are accustomed to laundering scoundrels.)