I hope your day is warm and wonderful and that somebody loves you enough to make you a chocolate pecan pie. I also hope you can mix leftover Aunt Erlene’s potato salad in with the turkey bones so that it doesn’t stand out on your plate that it’s awful. I do not know who taught that woman to make potato salad but they are going to hell.

I’ve got some great updates on the Alex Jones in Texas which I will post  later after the hub bub is over and I just need to sit and grin.

EDITED:

Okay, there was another Alex Jones hearing in Austin last week.  This one was for sanctions and a request for the judge to overrule the Texas Legislature’s cap on punitive damages.  It works like this: In Texas, the jury decides on two damages – one is actual damages and the other is called punitive damages. Punitive damages are meant to punish the bad guy who caused the lawsuit.

The jury in this case awarded about $4.5 million for actual damages on a vote of 10 – 2.  We learned after the trial from the jurors themselves that the two who voted “no” wanted the damages to be much higher. Next the lawyers argued punitive damages to the jurors.  The jury came back with $45 million on that.

However, the Texas Legislature decided that jurors could be trusted in deciding between life and death but they could not be trusted with really important stuff like money.  So, they put a cap of $750,000 for punitive damages. Juries are never told about this.

So, no matter what the jury says, the most that you can punish a civil shame bucket in Texas is $750,000.

There are a few rare exceptions to the cap but they are narrow and difficult to prove.

The judge in this case is Maya Guerra Gamble and I’ll have more to say about her later. After a day long hearing with lawyers Numbers 15 and 16 for Jones, she ruled that this case did not warrant caps and awarded the entire $50 million to Neil and Scarlett.

One other thing: The lawyer who totally messed up the Jones defense was there.  Andino Reynal returned to the scene of his last humiliation. Mark has asked for a sanctions hearing against him for the waste of time and money during this case. The judge has made no secret of the fact that she is “disappointed with” his appearances in court. He spoke not a word during this hearing and let the two new lawyers do all the talking.

He, however, did claim that he will be the attorney to represent Jones in the next two cases. We are pleased to hear that.

More to come.

we heard about another mass shooting in the news, my thoughts immediately went to a Joy Reid rant on TikTok. Now, I’m a bit old, so TikTok is not necessarily my thing, but the sentiment seemed so accurate that I couldn’t help but share it.

https://www.tiktok.com/@joyreidofficial/video/7164996613700717866?is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7164996613700717866

For those of you that haven’t followed the news, the latest tragedy involves a LGTBQ club in Colorado Springs. As of the latest reporting, five have died with over two dozen being injured. It might have been more on both fronts if not for the heroic efforts of some inside the club.

I should point out that there are plenty of people I know that are conservative and good, decent people. This turns into one of those logical statements that we used to get on the SAT or GRE. Not every conservative is an asshole and I would surmise that most conservatives aren’t assholes. Yet, when you picture an asshole in your head you probably see a conservative.

Maybe that isn’t fair. I’m willing to concede that some liberals could be assholes. Heck, some people might think I’m an asshole. However, let’s consider the campaign we just finished. Crime seemed to be the number one issue on the ballot for them. Yet, whether violent crime really is as pressing an issue is open to considerable debate.

The Democratic brain and the Republican brain work differently. When you say violent crime, the images that pop into our head are vastly different. For many conservatives, violent crime is a dog whistle that point to certain people committing those crimes. The Colorado Springs shooting involved a young white male. Most of these mass shootings involve young white males. So, there is some cognitive dissonance going on here. There is a difference between who we think is dangerous and who might actually be more dangerous.

It would be irresponsible of me to claim that this shooter (I will not publish his name) was somehow radicalized by the rhetoric on the right. We know that was true in the El Paso mass shooting. Yet, it isn’t true all of the time. It isn’t true that they are ALWAYS white males, but that seems to be a good rule of thumb.

I suppose I risk the possibility of becoming the old man sitting in his lawn chair and shaking his fists at the neighborhood kids playing in the street. However, I don’t remember this many zealots actually representing us in government when I was younger. The inflammatory rhetoric has an effect. It ramps up the tension and widens the divide. It creates the irrational view that the other side aren’t real Americans or even real people. It becomes easier to depersonalize and shuts off our compassion when tragedy befalls us. We become numb.

I wish I had some answers for everyone. I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and make it all go away. Maybe it starts with each of us individually. Maybe each of us can make a small contribution to returning our discourse into something resembling civility. Short of that then it becomes simply a live and let die world

We all saw it (or at least heard about it) when Elon Musk posted an easily manipulated poll asking if TFG should be reinstated at Twitter.  Recall that Musk, just a week ago, announced that any decisions about reinstating any toxic user would be deferred until he convened a “content moderation council” of outside experts.  Well, like almost everything Musk announces, that didn’t come true, and after Musk got a very split decision (52/48) to his poll, including votes from who knows how many bots he regularly criticized before buying the platform, he ordered that TFG be reinstated using the Latin term, Vox Populi, Vox Dei, translated “Voice of the People, Voice of God.”  With the dramatic flare of a Caesar granting a pardon, Musk unleashed TFG back on normal people.  Jesus H. Christ.

This morning, Quinta Jurecic of The Atlantic published a piece about the stupidity of Musk’s decision and it is a must read.  The operative quote that says it all:

“You are reading this, and I am writing it, because a very rich man who desperately wants people to pay attention to him posted an easily rigged poll on the website he’d just bought for $44 billion. The answers to many of the questions I have just posed will depend on the fancies of another rich man who desperately wants people to pay attention to him. There’s an indignity to having one’s attention jerked around this way.  Demanding that people simply ignore these bumbling titans is too simplistic: Their flailing has a tendency to wreck the world that the rest of us live in.”

Amen.  One can only hope that the media has learned something from the last train wreck of a presidency, but my confidence is at a low ebb.

Hey, I just deactivated my Twitter account of 12 years. You can too! Here’s how:

1. Open Twitter
2. Tap the navigation menu icon , then tap Settings and privacy.
2. Tap Your account, then tap Deactivate your account.
3. Don’t bother reading the account deactivation information, just tap Deactivate.
4. Enter your Twitter password when prompted and tap Deactivate.
5. Confirm that you want to proceed by tapping Yes, deactivate.

You can then remove the Twitter icon from your desktop, and go in peace.

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Nancy Pelosi just announced that she would not be seeking her position as Speaker of the House or Minority Leader.

We won’t find anybody as smart as she is and I heard that Adam Schiff isn’t entering the fray because he’s considering running for senate.  Pelosi’ stop two deputies, Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, were both born before chocolate chip cookies were invented.

Surely we can find someone young, vigorous, and smarter than Kevin McCarthy, which is a very low bar.