Category Archives: current events

Note timestamps on January 6th tweets by Chrump

Below is an example of how Twitter tried to police itself before a superior, empathy-free, insanely acquisitive, fascist-friendly billionaire disrupter freak bought the public forum, fired the moderators, made it hate-friendly, invited Chrumpie back on and renamed it X.

Note the timestamps on these January 6. 2021 tweets by the former president for a sense of how well the old company, with its full team of moderators, was able to vet thinly veiled calls to an active mob to lynch public officials. The real time response was underwhelming, in light of the American carnage that was going on between the provocative tweet and when it was marked “disputed.”

2:24 PM as thousands of deluded patriots broke through police lines and overran the Capitol looking for enemies to lynch

7:24 pm, Twitter leaps to flag Chrumpie’s wink, wink call to lynch Pence! Eh, stolen election claim “disputed”…

Those who believe in moral norms, in basic decency, often become food for the most determined predators, who use their immense size to devour everything in their path and will wipe their mouths with your norms long after your last screams have died out.

There are five hundred thousand times more of us than of them, so let’s go fuck ’em up, eh?

Well done, Robert Reich

Robert Reich:

Friends,

I hope you read today’s Common Good essay, which I posted late last night. 

In the meantime, though, I want to talk about symbols, images, and fascism.  

Here is Trump’s mugshot from his arraignment yesterday in Georgia. It’s a look of defiance — which I’m sure he practiced repeatedly beforehand — intended for his supporters and his Republican base to feel defiant, too. 

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is Trump’s thousand-word response to Wednesday night’s Republican debate which he declined to attend. 

He timed his arraignment in Georgia for yesterday so that it — and this photo — would dominate Thursday’s and Friday’s news, rather than anything or anyone emerging from the debate. 

But a defiant photograph isn’t “news.” It’s a symbol, an image. Which is exactly what Donald Trump is. He has no political platform, no specific policy agenda, no new ideas, and no plan for what he’ll do if he gets a second term. 

He exists as a symbol for the anger, discontent, bigotry, and vindictiveness he has unleashed in America. 

He is as close to America has come to a fascist leader, who doesn’t want his followers to think or analyze. He wants them only to feel. 

Last Thursday, Trump complained that Fox News “purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big “orange” one with my chin pulled way back. They think they are getting away with something, they’re not. Just like 2016 all over again … And then they want me to debate!”

Of course he’s angry. For the man who’s all symbol and image and without substance, a photo like the following conveys a brainless buffoon. It must drive him crazy. 

But Trump is not a brainless buffoon. He’s a cunning marketer, a diabolic manipulator of the public, a sly producer of his own daily reality show. His lead in the GOP’s presidential sweepstakes has grown. He will almost certainly be the Republican candidate for president next year — even if he’s in jail. 

How to debate a symbol? How to take on an image? How should Biden and the Democrats, and everyone who cares deeply about this country, respond to a demagogue who obsesses over what he projects rather than what he stands for? How to deal with a demagogue who doesn’t want followers to think but only to feel rage?

Expose him for who he is.

Nice move, DOJ

Go to like this bit of reporting from the great Heather Cox Richardson

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force (CFETF) established by Attorney General Merrick Garland in May 2021 to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud, announced its results today. The Department of Justice is brining federal criminal charges against 371 defendants for offenses related to more than $836 million in alleged COVID-19 fraud, most of it related to the two largest Small Business Administration pandemic programs: the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans, both funded by the March 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. In April 2020, Trump removed the inspector general tapped to chair a special oversight board Congress put in place to oversee the distribution of the act’s funds.

Removing rules, regulators and watch dogs is one of the hallmarks of MAGA and their original patrons, insatiable fascist billionaires.

America the credulous

You can listen to the braying of geniuses like Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Bobert, George Santos, Lyin’ Ted, Sean Hannity and the 19 RICO defendants in Fulton County. Apparently tens of millions of our fellow citizens do, believing every stinging accusation about inflation, communism and Hunter Biden’s criminal late filing of taxes and his nefarious laptop.

Then there are the facts, which don’t seem to get much political traction in this land of nonstop advertising and propaganda, according to the polls, though they do actually matter to the average citizen very much. Here’s one minute of Mehdi Hassan, debunking some widely held MAGA bullshit.

Clarence Thomas’s fanatical former clerk surrenders in Fulton County

Eastman was booked and released from the Fulton County Jail shortly before noon. Outside the jail, Eastman told NBC News that he “absolutely” still believed the 2020 election was stolen.

“No question in my mind,” said Eastman, who added that he was paying his own legal fees in the case.

a source

He’s on record telling co-conspirators, in the lead up to January 6, that if his creative legal theory ever reached the Supreme Court it would lose 9-0, even Clarence Thomas would have to vote against the idea that the Vice President has the power to singlehandedly decide the outcome of a presidential election during the ceremonial counting of electors by declaring a false controversy and letting loyal, partisan legislators decide who actually won the electors of their state.

Ginni Thomas, at least, must be delighted that her fellow-traveler Professor Eastman is sticking to his original story that the 2020 election was absolutely stolen. Jesus personally told Ginni the exact same thing, in a series of undeniable revelations. If you have fanatical faith you really don’t need anything else, as long as you have wealth and power too.