Reminder that the hearing in the Jones bankruptcy hearing is at 3:00 today in Houston federal court.  You can listen in.

Telephonic Participation
Dial-in Telephone No: 832-917-1510
Conference Code: 590153

Fair warning, bankruptcy court is about as exciting as golf on teevee in Chinese, so the odds of something you’ll understand happening are pretty damn slim.  However, with the type of lawyers that Jones hires, you never know.

You can read some very funny stuff from Above the Law, written in the English language for people who don’t speak lawyerese. And this one is good, too.

That 3:00 Texas time.

Both sets of Jones lawsuits (the one in Texas courts and the one in Connecticut in federal court) will be presenting their views. In short, they both claim this is a bogus bankruptcy meant to stall for time. And, the Jones lawyers probably went judge shopping by setting up a fake office in Victoria, Texas, a more conservative area of Texas.

So, if you’re not doing anything else …it’ll make you hate Jones even more.

UPDATE: It went about as we expected.  Jones’s lawyer, who seemed to be proud to be the oldest person in the courtroom simply did not know when to shut up.

And, when the judge reminded those people on video that they are required to behave themselves, a Jones fan wanted to do some free advertising for Jones’s products. Seriously, I am told by highly reliable sources that this was what someone put up instead of their own face.

Alex Jones – the Putin of Austin.

And the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that Jones just got $1 million in Bitcoins.

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Y’all, here’s what happens when your brains get soft.

Former president Donald Trump said he feared protesters would hit him with tomatoes, pineapples and other “very dangerous” fruit at his campaign rallies, declaring in a sworn deposition that “you can be killed if that happens.”

This comes from an event in Iowa where Trump pretended that people came to the rally with tomatoes.  He told the audience that if they saw someone trying to throw tomatoes at him, they should “knock the crap out of them.”

At one point in the questioning, Trump said his “knock the crap” statement was made “sort of in jest.” He then added, “But maybe, you know, a little truth to it.”

That sound you hear is my eyes rolling. Yeah, loudly.

“You’re lovin’ gives me a thrill But you’re lovin’ don’t pay my bills.” — Berry Gordy

Elon Musk has purchased Twitter for 44 billion dollars. Obviously, there is a lot that can go into that transaction and its effect on free speech and debates over the limitations of platforms. Who knows whether certain individuals will be allowed back on Twitter after the company banished them before. Someone else can handle that discussion or we can come to it later.

I’m still trying to get my head around the transaction itself. I have to admit that I have a twitter account. I have one of those Word Press triggers that will tweet out this column as soon as its published. I also peruse it every now and then to get breaking sports news and to see what people are saying about the Astros. I might participate in political discussions once in a blue moon. I’m on enough to have 800 or so followers. That number changes periodically. I just don’t have time to care.

I know companies advertise on Twitter and some sell their junk on Twitter as well. Still, I’m struggling to see how Twitter is worth much more than a billion dollars much less 44 billion. However, that’s still not the biggest road block in my mind. The biggest road block is just how someone is able to acquire enough money to buy anything for that sum.

There are two kinds of billionaires out there. There are the ones that create something. J.K. Rowling is a billionaire. Bill Gates is a billionaire. Steve Jobs was a billionaire before he died. Those kinds of billionaires make sense. If you create something or invent a better mousetrap you deserve your reward.

Then there are the billionaires that ride the coattails of someone else’s sweat, tears, and ingenuity. Elon Musk didn’t start Tesla. He just acquired them. He didn’t design the rockets that he launches into space. In fact, much of his fortune was inherited from his father. Some of you are probably thinking that sounds vaguely familiar. It should. That’s how wealth is often acquired these days.

Many of the billionaires out there are people you’ve never heard of. They make their money investing in other people’s blood, sweat, and tears. They buy companies and sell companies in the blink of an eye. They don’t create anything. They don’t make anything better or even worse. They are like parasites on the body politic, glomming the excess off the top before anyone can see it.

The ultimate question is whether they should exist in the first place. Someone somewhere along the line (likely on Twitter) came up with the best suggestion I’ve heard so far. Once someone gets to 999,999,999.99 they should get a trophy saying they had won capitalism and they get nothing else. The rest goes into the public coffers and distributed somehow equitably. Maybe it could retire down the debt. Maybe we could end homelessness. Maybe we could make sure everyone has a hot meal. Maybe we could make sure that everyone has health care and access to post-secondary education. I suppose that is too much to ask. A simple man can dream simple dreams. The rest can buy platforms with more money than they know what to do with.

Red flares are shooting up all around this one.

The Truth and Courage PAC was created in Austin at the end of last year.

So far, the PAC hasn’t spent a dime supporting or opposing any candidates, but it has over $2 million to spend.

Some of it’s initial funding came from two LLCs.  As always, you can click the little one to see a big one.

Karen Wright and her husband, Thomas Rastin, also gave $100,000 to the Super PAC.

Here’s the deal: Wright and her husband have been taken in by scammers before to the tune of $1.3 million.

The Super PAC also got a quarter million dollars from a mysterious trust.

Who owns Ballantrae Farm?

Retired? My sweet patootie. He’s a senior vice president at Bechtel, a major federal contractor.

And $1 million from hedge fund billionaire, Jess Yass.

Let’s keep an eye on this little sucker. It’ll be interesting how they’ll spend this money.

Oh y’all.  He has a desk.

Under the topic of “Will Always Remain the Cleveland Indians To Me …”

“Anybody who changes the name of the ‘storied’ Cleveland Indians (from 1916), an original baseball franchise, to the Cleveland Guardians, is not fit to serve in the United States Senate.”

Trump’s unadorned candidate in the Ohio Republican primary is Matt Dolan.  His family owns Cleveland’s baseball team.

I have no idea why storied is in quotation marks.