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.

“I never understood wind.  I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right?”

“So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air.”

“A windmill will kill many bald eagles.”  After a certain number, they make you turn the windmill off, that is true. By the way, they make you turn it off. And yet, if you killed one, they put you in jail. That is OK. But why is it OK for windmills to destroy the bird population?”

Donald J. Trump, December 21, 2019, Speaking to Turning Point USA conference in West Palm Beach, Florida

NBC News was invited in for an exclusive look at a western themed party at Mara Lago this weekend.  The party cost from $500 per ticket to $20,000 for a big girl table.  The charity for which they were raising money?  Themselves, silly.  This was about the Trumpettes worshipping the Demigod Donnie at his Church of Perpetual Narcissism.  The whole sordid event was one of those that you can’t unsee.

Warning: This scene contains violence.

As I watched Trump’s post election response yesterday, including the unceremonious firing of Jeff Sessions, I was reminded of this scene from the Untouchables where Robert DeNiro, as Al Capone, dispatches one of his “team” with a baseball bat for disloyalty.  The impression was reinforced for me, though, when Trump went full-on De Niro during his press conference, gloating about how Republicans (which were individually named) who refused to kiss his ring were defeated on Tuesday.  The meltdown came, thought, after members of the press started asking Trump really tough questions.  He paced, shouted at reporters, and almost walked off the stage as Jim Acosta from CNN pressed him about the racist fake caravan issue that Trump had relentlessly flogged in the run-up to election day.  The day ended with Acosta being banned from the White House and Sarah Sanders falsely accusing him of putting his hands on a WH intern when she tried to wrench a microphone out of his hand during Trump’s meltdown.  In a statement, CNN responded to Sander’s lie, calling her lie a lie.

After Sander’s false allegations, the Twitterverse erupted, attacking Sanders, and pointing out the irony of the White House accusing a reporter for touching a young female intern after defending Trump against almost two dozen accusations of actual sexual assault.

So what’s really going on here?  What’s going on is that Trump is terrified of what happens next.  The Dems can now subpoena his staffers and his sycophants.  He’s installed a goon as acting AG.  The Dems have already requested document retention of all communications between said goon and the White House for further investigation.  In January, the House will most certainly subpoena him to testify under oath about his record of partisan defense of Trump and his allies.  Mueller is coming, and I have to believe that he has disceminated his findings among other law enforcement agencies that have jurisdiction.  Trump most certainly understands that he’s in a box now that he’s lost the House.  If he fires Mueller, the House will ask him to testify before the Judiciary committee and he’ll sing like a bird.  If Trump’s goon, Matthew Whitaker, is nominated for permanent AG, that hearing in the Senate will be ugly.

Many, including me, have predicted that this presidency will not end well.   We’re getting ever closer to that end, and the strain on His Orangeness has turned him, if that’s even possible, into an even more clownish figure with his heavily made up tanning bed glow that exaggerates his raccoon eyes and ugly ducktail hair weave.  Add that to his ever increasing erratic behavior and temper tantrums, and the picture is ugly.  Really ugly.  My only question now is not how his presidency will implode, but when.  I just hope he doesn’t get a lot of innocent people killed or injured before that happens.

A few hours ago the New York Times published an op-ed from who they say is a senior Trump administration official.  File this piece under nuclear war with Trump.  The piece claims that their are “adults in the room” who are part of a secret resistance to “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations” and protect the nation from his impulsiveness and proclivity to support despots while denigrating long standing allies.  The writer clarifies that their opposition of Trump’s worst traits is not some left wing effort – quite the opposite; he/she says this:

“That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”

After the op-ed exploded onto social media, Dan Rather tweeted,

Trump is presently going apeshit on Twitter, and just posted this:

I had a mixed reaction to this piece – First, it’s a Holy Crap moment where even insiders are talking about THE PROBLEM.  Second, I find the piece oddly comforting that there really are normal people in the WH diligently working to stop this lunatic from burning down the planet.  It’s somewhat cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.

In today’s NYT: The FBI is urgently requesting that everyone reboot their home and small business routers.  Russian malware has been infiltrating small networks causing damage from stolen passwords and personal data to rendering devices unusable.  This is not a joke, this is not The Onion.  Reboot your router.

And, no, Donald, this is not fake news.