I’ve never been much of a Twitter user, primarily finding it occasionally useful to follow breaking stories.  When Elon took over the platform, though, I decided to follow him and others to see the effects on the platform itself as he consolidated power in the company.  My conclusions, as you can imagine, are not good.  First, just an observation, and it’s no secret – Twitter is already an open sewer of nonsense, misinformation, and dumbasses who don’t know how many hours are in a day, those who can’t do simple arithmetic, and those who have very low reading comprehension.

Then Elon took over, and it’s gotten worse.  A lot worse.  First, Musk is as impulsive and immature as a high school freshman complete with erratic behavior and childish judgment.  Add that to the fact that he has no guardrails to guide him, and being the richest man in the world there’s no one around him to keep him from acting out his worst tendencies.  After the takeover on Thursday, he fired the senior management team including those in charge of moderation of the platform, and has been hinting at massive layoffs of other employees.  He’s also on record of being opposed to blocking racists, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists, anti-semites, and outright weirdos.  He’s more than hinted that he’ll let TFG and Kanye West back on the platform.  Use of the N-word on Twitter  is up over 500% since he took over.  Worse, he’s participating in misinformation himself retweeting, then later deleting an idiotic homophobic conspiracy theory that Paul Pelosi’s attacker was actually a male prostitute that Pelosi had brought to the house. His deleted retweet was directed at…wait for it…Hillary Clinton.  That’s right, the “Chief Twit” showed such poor judgment that he amplified this idiocy to his 112 MILLION followers.

Elon’s control of Twitter has a LOT more downside than upside for not only him financially, but for simple common decency.  Twitter is highly influential over global society and it’s critical that it gets it right between balancing free speech principles against threatening language and intentional disinformation.  He’s demonstrated that he has no qualifications to not just manage this issue, but even to recognize it exists.

I am not hopeful for any good coming from this takeover, and can only hope that twitter goes the way of MySpace and Lotus 123.

This afternoon, the SCOTUS issued a one sentence rebuke of TFG in his efforts to hamstring the DOJ investigating his theft of thousands of government documents.  The order, one sentence long, said:

TRUMP, DONALD J. V. UNITED STATES

The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on September 21, 2022, presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied.

Even the SCOTUS can occasionally surprise by doing its goddam job.

Earlier this week the NYTimes published an investigative story that had several revelations including an account of TFG demanding that yet another lawyer lie for him early last year that he had returned all the documents and that lawyer refusing.  More important, it’s damned likely he still has government documents somewhere else like his NY apartment, in Bedminster, or even Mar a Lago.

But the story also recounted TFG’s desire to used the stolen documents as trade bait.  The key quote:

“Mr. [TFG], still determined to show he had been wronged by the F.B.I. investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia, was angry with the National Archives and Records Administration for its unwillingness to hand over a batch of sensitive documents that he thought proved his claims.

In exchange for those documents, Mr. [TFG] told advisers, he would return to the National Archives the boxes of material he had taken to Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla.”

So there it is.  Not only did TFG recklessly steal top secret and other government documents, he then concocted a plan to use his unlawful possession of stolen documents as a hostage to get evidence to support his contention that the FBI was out to get him.  It’s classic mobster behavior; worse, it’s stupid, careless, and another example of the danger this man poses to not only the country but to himself.

I’ve had several theories about why TFG stole these documents and then toyed with the DOJ for over a year and a half; first, obviously TFG is a dumbass with shit for brains; second, I figured he saw value in them to sell to the highest bidder; third, he loves all the trappings of being president and continued playing Oval Office and pretending he’s still there; lastly I figured he just likes pissing off the “deep state”.  All of these theories are plausible and damned likely; what I hadn’t thought about that he believed he could use the stolen documents to steal more documents.  That act is just a glimpse into how evil TFG truly is.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals just dropped a 29 page ruling on TFG, siding with the DOJ that classified materials are classified, that TFG had provided zero evidence he’d declassified anything when he infested the Oval Office, and that he had no purpose to possess US government documents.  Key quote:

“[Mr. Trump] has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents.  Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents. And even if he had, that, in and of itself, would not explain why plaintiff has an individual interest in the classified documents.”

The ruling went further to say that the Special Master, Judge Dearie, had no need to review any classified documents and ordered the removal of those documents from those he was to review.  This ruling cleared the way for the FBI to continue its criminal investigation into TFG’s hoarding of highly sensitive documents and his obstruction to stop the DOJ from recovering them.

Oh, and two of the three judges on the panel were TFG appointees.

Bad day for TFG, good day for democracy. Boom.

Let’s all keep in mind that Putin killed a new democracy in its crib back in 2000 when he took over Russia after Boris Yeltsin.  Using the KGB skills he honed in Communist East Germany in the early 80s, Putin then created a Russia that is now more dangerous and rich than the previously known Soviet Union.  Putin was ashamed that the Soviet Union collapsed after the Berlin wall fell, and he wants it rebuilt, but not as the Soviet Union, but as an imperialist Russian Empire.  He doesn’t want to be president, he wants to be Czar.

He can do that now that Russia is one of the largest oil and gas producers and controls energy supplies into Europe.  He has rebuilt the Russian military, now has a warm water port after taking Crimea from Ukraine, quashed all opposition, changed the constitution so he can stay in power for life and has made elections there a joke.  Billionaire oligarchs support and protect him, and his drive to build a new Russian Empire is relentless.
And who’s happy about it?  TFG himself and his supporters. Last night Putin brazenly invaded Ukraine, even shelling facilities near Kyiv, and millions of Ukrainians, in disbelief that he actually attacked, are fleeing to the west.  On Tuesday, TFG call Putin a genius and said how smart he was to go in as a “peacekeeper”.  Last night, right before Putin launched attacks in to Kyiv and other cities, TFG did it again, praising Putin at a fund raiser at Mar a Lago, saying how smart Putin is, walking in “for two dollars worth of sanctions”, then ironically claiming that if he were in office,

“This would never have happened, ever in a million years, it would have never happened.  And I know him very well. I know him probably almost as well as I know anybody in this room other than Doc Ronny [Jackson].”

So, let’s be clear – TFG is characteristically praising, as he has for years, then tried to push blame onto Biden for Putin doing what he himself supports.  Of course, his sycophants fell in line, praising Putin and TFG, bashing Biden.

If anyone doubts what the US would look like during a second TFG term, just look at Russia today and listen to TFG’s actual words.  He dreams of being a dictator and almost accomplished that in 2020.  With the Republican Party in tatters and now virtually 100% aligned with TFG and Russia, the only thing standing in his way is the rest of us making sure he never gets close to the Oval Office ever again.

TFG and his supporters are using Putin to undermine Biden and the US government to his own advantage, and Putin is so long term focused and patient that I don’t have any doubt that another TFG victory in 2024 figures into his calculus in going after Ukraine today.  Even if he doesn’t succeed this time, he’ll just come back in 2025 as Trump holds the door open for him by lifting all sanctions (like he did in 2017) and undermining NATO while fantasizing doing the same thing to Mexico.

If one ever needed another justification for abolishing the Electoral College, TFG is it.

The sordid details of TFG’s extreme efforts to stay in power after he lost the election in 2020 are finally surfacing.  TFG tried to get the US military, the DOJ, and Homeland Security to seize the voting machines in states he lost so he could steal the presidency away from millions and millions of voters who chose the other guy.  I even remember the rumors that were floating around that the US military was seizing machines, as far fetched as that sounded pre-January 6. Today, it’s perfectly plausible, because that’s EXACTLY what TFG was actually trying to do.  He’s even publicly admitted it.

Even today, all of these facts are not only shocking, they are enraging.  It REALLY pisses me off that people in the government KNEW what he was doing.  A LOT of people knew what he was doing.  Many people in these agencies were aware of TFG’s efforts to steal the election; more important, those in high ranking political and non-political offices knew, including the Joint Chiefs, Attorney(s) General, Secretary of Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA, and hundreds of staffers in these agencies.  Fortunately for us our brittle system held this time, but that’s unlikely the next time it happens (and it will) with the changes Republicans have rammed through the state legislatures over the last year to make it easier to overturn election results they don’t like.

What I want to know, and I demand this answer, is where in the hell have these hundreds of people been in the last year?  Because he was so dangerous, I understand the cone of silence until we ousted TFG from the WH, but why the silence since then?  Now he’s just a crazy old fat man sitting on his gold plated toilet screaming at his television. It’s been over a year since he committed serious crimes on both state and federal levels, and NO ONE has come forward with the full story.  Why in the hell isn’t the FBI perp walking him right now?  This son of a bitch almost succeeded in overturning a national election, aided by many, many, co-conspirators.  Why aren’t THOSE people being perp walked?

Hey, Merrick Garland, DO YOUR DAMN JOB.  No more eggshell walking – go after this guy and everyone who either aided him or even looked the other way.  If there is such a thing as accessory to sedition, THIS IS IT.

Get to work.