Tag Archives: politics

General

End of the beginning…

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…beginning of the end?

Today, April 15, 2024, Donald Trump, ex-President and current Republican candidate for the Republican party, is in court facing his first actual, honest-to-goodness criminal trial.

Criminal.

Oh, and if it isn’t obvious… BEWARE… THERE BE POLITICS DISCUSSED HERE…!

So much crap has happened since he first announced his first candidacy against Hilary Clinton some, what, five thousand years ago now? Won the Presidency (thanks to the electoral college… he actually got less votes than Ms. Clinton), was impeached several times, had a disastrous presidency (I know there are those who don’t think so but… seriously?!?!), then lost to Joe Biden but refused to accept that fact and started his “I wuz robbed” campaign which continues to this day.

He’s already been found liable in two civil trails, one in which he was formally found guilty of sexual assault and another involving lying about the values of his properties and thus not paying the taxes owed. Between those two civil trails, he’s in the hole by nearly $250 million and counting. If the tax trail -on appeal though the monies proffered for the appeal are questionable and may wind up getting him in even more trouble (if that’s even possible)- ultimately loses its appeal, Trump will then owe somewhere north of $350-450 million on that trail alone…!

But here’s where the rubber hits the proverbial road.

In this case, which involves campaign financing illegalities -specifically paying off Stormy Daniels to deny an affair during a time where such an admission might have cost him the first election- Mr. Trump may well wind up being actually found guilty of criminal activities.

Remember: Trump’s one time attorney Michael Cohen served time in jail for elements related to this case.

So buckle up kids…

…I suspect we’re in for one hell of a ride. And it could well be the start of the end for Mr. Trump.

General

Trumpian Monday…

POLITICS… Beware!!!

So I wrote a few days back about Monday and the bond Trump has to pay -which was supposed to be $464 million dollars and… it was reduced by the New York appeals court to $175 million and he was given ten days to secure this amount and…

…I don’t get it.

I suppose there are many who don’t either. I thought the whole point of posting the bond was to secure the judgment amount while the appeals process was playing out.

Assuming Trump can get this lower amount of money for the appeal and further assuming he has the rest squirreled away somewhere, what’s to stop him from trying to burn through it while the appeal process goes on?

Again: Wasn’t this amount supposed to essentially lock up the judgment amount so that if the appeal fails, the victim(s) of the fraud perpetrated by Trump would get their restitution?

I dunno.

I did see some pundits say the amount is very high and, to be clear, many of his properties are in the United States and, specifically, within New York and perhaps because of this -and the fact that there are people overseeing Trump’s finances now- they felt there was no way he would get around this judgment if and when the appeal process is exhausted. Prosecutors could then just take over the properties and -hopefully- that’s that.

And I suppose $175 million is still a pretty high amount.

So why do I feel like Trump has yet again gotten something no other defendant gets when facing the legal system?

I have to say… the moment we no longer have to deal with Trump and his… stuff… anymore can’t come soon enough.

General

Who watches the watchmen?

Before I get into this, let me say: Sorry for the dearth of posts!

Sometimes it feels like I’m in some kind of acceleration chamber. My last post, made some 15 days ago shocked me. I’ve been busy, but surely I haven’t been away from here that long, have I?!

Welp, it appears I have and truthfully I find it hard to account for the lost time, even as busy as I have been.

Regardless… onwards!

So yesterday the people investigating the Supreme Court’s Alito opinion piece on Dobbs, the ruling which did away with Roe v Wade and which, IMHO, is going to have pretty severe repercussions for the next few election cycles, issued their report and they said…

…they couldn’t find who leaked Alito’s opinion. An article presented on CNN.com does a pretty good job explaining what this report stated:

Supreme Court issues report on Dobbs leak but says it hasn’t identified the leaker | CNN Politics

The bottom line from the report is that there were some 90 people interviewed and it seems like the Supreme Court’s records are kept in a rather… sloppy way and, bottom line, they couldn’t determine whodunnit.

However…

This article, also presented on CNN.com and written by Joan Biskupic, goes into how…

Supreme Court embarrassed by the opinion leak is embarrassed again | CNN Politics

The author notes that the investigation did not interview any of the Justices themselves or their spouses, a rather odd thing to do if one is bent on getting to the bottom of such things.

There are many who feel, based on examining the report and what’s gone on in this investigation, that perhaps Chief Justice John Roberts ultimately didn’t really want to know who leaked Alito’s draft.

One can speculate as to the why, but it seems somewhat obvious: It very well could have been someone quite high up, up to and including Justice Alito, Justice Thomas, or perhaps Thomas’ wife, who has -shall we be delicate here?- a seemingly very strong political agenda of her own.

I agree with the ultimate opinion of Ms. Biskupic’s article, though: By issuing this “non finding” the Supreme Court does itself no favors. If the original leak was such a huge embarrassment and a stunning breach of decorum and therefore an investigation into the source of this leak was something that had to be done…

…why hamper the investigation from the very beginning?

Mind you, I feel Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley, who conducted the investigation, likely did as well as could be done but the reality is that there are other Justice agencies it seems could have done a more thorough job… and are built to take on such cases.

And as was noted in Ms. Biskupic’s article, the final report is also damning in that it suggests the Court’s internal security is anything but, and further leaks are certainly possible.

Again: One can’t help but speculate as to whether this whole investigation might have been more of a PR move rather than a serious attempt at getting to “the truth” of the leak. One can’t help also speculate that maybe for Chief Justice Roberts, in a Supreme Court which seems to be having its share of problems, felt the need to do something for the purpose of looking like he was doing something… but may have ultimately hoped for this result.

The boat’s rocking enough without the revelation that perhaps a Supreme Court Justice -or a close confidant/spouse of one- is a leaker.

POSTSCRIPT:

Today a few more interesting opinion pieces have been published and are worth giving a read.

First up is Aredba Shah’s article from Salon.com:

Legal experts stunned SCOTUS leak investigators may not have interviewed any justices — or spouses | Salon.com

This article points out the fact that bothers many regarding this investigation: It seems like from the onset it was given certain parameters, including not talking to or interviewing any of the Justices or their spouses, which seems wrong considering the supposed “egregious” nature of this lead.

There is at least one really fascinating tweet referred to in this article and its by Elie Mystal, The Nation’s legal analyst:

I told everybody, from the very beginning, that if the Dobbs leaker turned out to be a Republican, the Supreme Court would somehow never find who did it. Welp, the report’s out and, what do you know, they don’t know who did it.

Yikes.

A second interesting article is by Katherine Fung and presented at Newsweek…

Supreme Court Report Sparks Suspicions About Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito (newsweek.com)

What I’m noticing from many of these articles is that the initial line of suspicion, that perhaps a more liberal minded clerk had possibly leaked the Alito Dobbs decision, seems to be less and less likely.

Sadly, that means that the Supreme Court and its conservative majority is looking increasingly like it has decided to “move on” from this because, let’s be clear here: They kinda know it was either a conservative clerk or someone much higher up responsible for this but simply don’t want to let things get messier than they are.

As I said before…

Yikes.

General, Movies, TV

Midterms are (finally!) over

Obviously, POLITICS FOLLOW…

So a couple of days ago and on December 6th George had their run-off election to determine who would serve the next six years in the Senate, incumbent Democratic candidate Rafael Warnock or Republican ex-football player Hershel Walker.

There was a runoff because in the midterm elections held on November 8th, Mr. Warnock didn’t receive the necessary 50% of the votes needed to be declared the outright winner. He did receive the most votes, mind you, but just not enough. So the runoff came and, while the results were close, Mr. Warnock won.

This effectively ends what seems like a too long midterm election cycle, one that proved surprising in many ways.

Chief among them is the fact that the supposed “red wave” never materialized. While Republicans did regain control over the House of Representatives, their margin of victory is very slim…

In the House of Representatives, the magic number is 218 and, as you can see from the graphic above, Republicans gained 10 seats to have an 11 vote margin over Democrats but only 5 votes which can provide them a majority in any votes. In other words, if a measly 6 Republicans decide they don’t like whatever is being presented on the floor and the Democratic party holds their votes together, whatever proposals may not pass.

One would think Republicans can maintain a united front. After all, for the previous two years the Democratic Party held the exact same numbers. However, unlike the Democratic Party, the Republican party is far more fractured and there are far right wing elements within it which are trying to exert their power and this may not sit well with others within the party who aren’t quite as extreme in their views.

We’ll see.

As far as Mr. Warnock, he represents the 51st Democratic Senator. In the Senate, there are 100 representatives and the current Vice President can serve as a “tie breaker”. In this election cycle, not only did the Republicans underperform in the House, though they did gain control, in the Senate they actually lost one seat. Now, the Democratic Party has an actual majority here, which will help them with their legislation and, especially judicial picks. Now the committees which push judicial candidates for formal votes will have a Democratic majority which therefore means these picks will be sent to the full Senate much more quickly.

In this day and age, a positive for sure.

In the meantime, Ex-President Donald Trump seems to be having a very bad time of late. He recently hosted Kayne West and Mr. West decided to bring along Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist, to the event. This, along with a court finding the Trump Organization found guilty on all counts of tax evasion, begins to show how bad a time he’s been having of late. Add to that the fact that the majority of candidates he endorsed for this election cycle, including Mr. Walker, lost and you start to see the first inklings of the Republican party maybe realizing he is a drain on their party.

Maybe.

Politics are an interesting and, especially these days, toxic topic to delve into.

On December 5th it was announced actress Kirstie Alley, perhaps best known for her role in the TV show Cheers, had passed away from cancer at the age of 71. My first experience seeing her was in the wonderful Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, easily (IMHO of course!) the best of the Star Trek theatrical movies…

I don’t know Ms. Alley other than the roles she’s played on movies or TV but I was surprised to see many people opining on how (here comes that word again) toxic she had become in the past ten or so years. Seems Ms. Alley, who is also a Scientologist (another strike against her to many!) also became very pro-Trump and hard right wing in her final years, espousing some of the more far out/lunatic rantings coming from that side.

I genuinely feel for people who have fallen into the sway of these right wing politics, especially the things offered from right wing media that seem from the outside looking in as being idiotic at best and dangerous at worst.

In the past few generations, really since Nixon was essentially booted from the White House, it seems like the ring wing in this country has slowly but effectively weaponized their strategies and have used the media to a sometimes alarming degree in swaying voters their way.

And they have taken a lot of people into their sway, including, it would seem, Ms. Alley.

Maybe I’m naive but its my hope that many of these people realize that much of the hate -and it usually is just that, focused hate- is being used to outrage them and keep them in their camp. Hate can be like a drug, one that keeps people in your sway.

I’m not saying these people are mindless drones, though at times they may talk like them.

Perhaps with this election and the fact that Republicans -and especially those who seemed to be farthest right- lost and underperformed as they did that maybe this particular dam is starting to crack.

We’ll see, won’t we?

General

Post-Election Analysis, Part 33 & 1/3

After this, I promise I’ll lay back and find other stuff to talk about. Regardless…

BEWARE – THERE BE POLITICS DISCUSSED HERE…!

Still there?

You have been warned…!

So as of today, Wednesday the 16th of November, a full eight days since the midterms elections on the 8th, the following is true:

a) Many thought there would be a big “red” wave which did not materialize at all.

b) Not only did it not materialize, the Democratic Party will retain control over the Senate. To be determined is whether they will have 50 or 51 votes. This is because the Ralph Warnock/Herschel Walker race in Georgia goes to a tie-breaker as neither received 50% of the vote. Warnock did get more votes but, given this is essentially a “new” election, I suppose anything is possible.

c) the right wing media has had a really hard time explaining what happened and some of the explanations are…

…well, I guess the word “yikes” comes to mind.

Sorry for the quality of the video, it’s the best example I could find without getting too deep into the madness of YouTube.

Let me be clear here: I find most -perhaps even all- of what Jesse Watters says here loathsome. If we are to take his words here at face value (and with many of the Fox talking heads one sometimes wonders what is real and what is said to simply be provocative) he seems to view women -single women in particular- as being some kind of lesser/dumb creatures who are “brainwashed” into voting Democratic. Further, he states that they need to get married so as to “wake up”. At this point they will vote for the clearly better Republican choice.

Yeah, sure.

As I didn’t want to totally lose my mind, I’ve seen/read some choice items here and there from the right wing side and they really seem at a loss as to why they underperformed so badly here. Mr. Watters’ comments are idiotic, for sure, but I haven’t heard all that many right wing analysis for the underperformance which is more insightful, especially in interviews of politicians of the Republican party.

One thing that no one on that side seems to want to talk about, for example, is the effect of the insurrection of January 6th. In the right wing echo chamber that event is either too distant or completely irrelevant. Given what happened very recently to Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and the abhorrent reactions from some in the right wing to it, I suspect this violent act only reminded people not in the thrall of Fox News and its like of just how nasty those on that side can be.

Then there’s the Dobbs Decision which essentially nullified Roe v. Wade and struck down the right to abortion. This ruling not only inflamed many (including unmarried women) because not only was it a bad decision, IMHO, but it also remined people of the chicanery and lies which lead to the Supreme Court having a majority in place to overturn it.

To wit: Mitch McConnell not allowing Barrack Obama to get his nominee for the Supreme Court to get a hearing and be put in. McConnell’s reasoning was laughable then, and proved incredibly hypocritical when he subsequently hurried the nominees of Trump into position on the court. Following the Dobbs decision, people scrutinized the hearings several of these now Supreme Court justices gave back when they were originally nominated and it was clear they were at best very slippery in their responses about Roe v. Wade… if not outright lying.

Not a good look for people who now sit on the upper echelon of our court system.

And who can forget Donald Trump himself? His at times outrageous actions and hateful -even bigoted- rhetoric during his presidency turned off a lot of people. He simply couldn’t show himself to be nice. He had to always go nuclear on it seemed every issue.

Trump’s handling of COVID, further, led to the deaths of many, many of his supporters. By scoffing at the dangers of the pandemic, he emboldened his fans to ignore vaccines and preventative care. Today, one can find articles pointing out that more Republicans died from COVID following the appearance of the vaccines than Democrats. Whether those deaths may have affected the vote count is questionable and may not have mattered.

What one wonders, however, is how many people who scoffed at COVID subsequently had a big scare with it and realized -maybe too late for relatives or loved ones- that what Trump and the right wing media said about it was wrong. And if what they said was wrong about the pandemic, then maybe, just maybe, this might have opened their eyes enough to look away from the right wing media environment.

The point I’m making is that there probably wasn’t any one single thing that caused the red wave to not materialize. And it certainly wasn’t single women.

Yesterday, November the 15th Donald Trump announced he will run for President again for 2024 and the announcement was met with, it appears, yawns…

There is at the very least a realization in the Republican party that Donald Trump is toxic to their election chances. It’s taken them a while to realize this fact but here’s the thing: Like or loathe him, Donald Trump commands a lot of voters’ attention on that side of the political spectrum. Certainly he does for voters who until now have flocked to Republicans.

So there appears to be attempts like what you see in that New York Post front page to put him down, to not give him attention.

This is a very calculated effort but here’s the problem: It might not work.

What if Trump re-engages with the 30 or so percent of people who will vote for him no matter what? What if when the Republican debates come around he manages to blow Ron DeSantis -or whichever other candidate is out there trying to get the Republican nomination- out of the water like he did with Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush?

Conversely, what if what the Republican power structure and right wing media is doing works and he doesn’t get the Republican nomination? Does Donald Trump give up and quietly go away?

Man, I do not see that happening.

In Donald Trump I see a guy who doubles and triples down on his actions when they fail.

So what happens if Donald Trump doesn’t get the Republican nomination? Is it entirely out of the realm of possibility he decides to run as a 3rd party candidate?

Either way, I suspect today the more rational minds within the Republican party must be realizing his brand of politicking is a net drag on them.

As I’m not a fan of the Republican party as it stands today -way too extreme for my taste- I’m nonetheless curious to see how this all plays out in the next couple of years.

It’s morbidly entertaining, if nothing else.

General

Just a couple of more thoughts…

…about the November 8th election.

Obviously…

BEWARE… POLITICS!

It’s Friday the 11th and as of today, we still don’t have a total tally or knowledge of who “won” either the House or Senate.

We can make some guesses and it appears the Republicans will take over the House but with a very slim margin and it appears, at least so far, that Democrats will indeed keep the Senate, though their number may be the same, ie 50 seats, or one extra to 51 (plus the Vice President who can vote in the Senate would make them have 52 votes).

What I find most intriguing today, apart from still being quite pleasantly surprised by most everything that happened (save to my state of Florida) is that it appears there’s been an awakening with the youth vote.

I believe, like many others, issues regarding the Dobbs decision, which invalidated Roe v. Wade, is going to keep haunting the Republican party for a very long time. Already there was a report that the party leaders in Florida are looking to further limit abortions and… I just don’t see that helping their -or Ron DeSantis’- cause.

For so many years the issue of abortion was played well by the Republican party as an instrument to draw in people but now that the Supreme Court has taken away Roe, the sleeping tiger (as the old cliche goes) has awoken and it feels like this may be the start of something quite bad for the Republican party.

Of course, we’ll see.

Either way, the decision may well have led to this non-Red wave, which so many pundits were predicting…

Here’s the thing that must be stressing Republicans out even more: They still have Trump hollering from the sidelines and many of them are only now, after this election, starting to talk openly on (finally) leaving him…

Worse, Trump has begun to bad mouth Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and who many of the right wing pundits feel is the best choice to run for President in 2024…

Trump, I do believe, wants desperately to be President again and realizes this may well be the one -and only- way to avoid all the many, many legal problems he is currently facing.

Which will, I believe, make things incredibly hard for DeSantis and those who hope the Republicans will somehow help their cause by the next election cycle.

I wonder.

Ron DeSantis may have surprised many by his win in Florida, but I have grave doubts he will be able to project himself well to the rest of the country. Much as I don’t like Trump, I can’t deny he has a great deal of charisma. He talks big and very confidently and for some, that was enough. Even when whatever he said made no sense.

DeSantis doesn’t have that charisma. If anything, he is a black hole of emotion, a guy who looks awkward in public and when he talks you almost expect him to start screaming that those darn kids get off his lawn.

He may, in time, be able to smooth his public persona, but I wonder.

Either way, the big takeaway in the days following the election, apart from how poorly the Republicans did/how well the Democratic party did and how it appears the Dobbs decision will continue to reverberate throughout the country, is how now there are those in the Republican party who are willing to do the unthinkable and denounce Trump.

Too bad they didn’t show any of that kind of bravery when he was being impeached.

General

Post-election analysis…

Though it should be obvious from this post’s headline, nonetheless…

AHEAD LIES POLITICS! BEWARE!!!

Going into the midterm elections of November 8th, it was looking pretty grim from the Democratic party. Historically, the party in power tended to do badly in the midterms, often losing a large number of seats in the House of Representatives as well as the Senate.

Pundits predicted the so-so economic news of late coupled with inflation and a lower approval rating for President Biden and Republican enthusiasm to vote pointed to the possibility of a “red wave”, ie a massive turnout for Republican candidates.

It was not to be.

Even today, two days after the elections, we still don’t know for certain if the Republicans will take over the House of Representatives (they likely will, but by a very small margin). The Senate remains in play as well, with the very real possibility the Democratic party might pick up 1 overall extra seat from what they had before to where the Republicans may gain control over the Senate by an equally thin margin.

So while it is possible the Republicans gain control over the Senate and House, their margins will be razor thin at best.

There is plenty of teeth gnashing on the Republican side as to why this happened and it appears there is a consensus, even within the right-wing ether, that the Republican party really blew it here. In fact, the only “bright” spot for them was what happened in Florida with the re-election of the Governor, a man who it seems Fox news is keen on anointing the next big thing (I have my doubts he’ll play all that well outside of this state, frankly) and the re-election of Marco Rubio to the Senate.

But that was it.

Let’s see what happens next…

General

Election 2022

We’re a few days away from election day, Tuesday November the 8th and I hope everyone out there takes some time to vote.

If you’ve been ’round these parts you know, more or less, my politics.

Regardless of them, I hope everyone out there takes the time to look into the various candidates and issues presented on your local ballot and, even more importantly and as I said above, takes the time to vote.

I may not agree with all issues from all/any candidates, but not voting is simply not an option. At least for me.

General

This n’ that

There’s been plenty of… uh… interesting news of late.

In the Ukraine, the war between Russia (or should I say Putin?) and that country rages on and… what a fucking mess.

Seriously.

There are rumors going around that Putin is ill/has cancer and one wonders if this is indeed true and that perhaps he’s got a terminal illness, if that may have been part of the idiotic impetus of his to launch this ill conceived attack.

Either way, the news coming out of the Ukraine is maddening. Cities essentially left in rubble, people dying for essentially nothing but a madman’s whim, and unimaginable tragedy.

Ukraine has held off Russia incredibly well but as time goes on, one wonders if they can sustain their defense of the country. Russia, similarly, seems to be low on soldiers as reports have surfaced that they’ve allowed people over 40 to enlist.

More worrisome are the threats Russia keeps making. Many of them, I suspect, are hollow and laughable. But Russia has nuclear arms and one has to nonetheless deal with this bully in as strong a way as possible.

*****

Ah the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp defamation trial.

It ended last week and, frankly, I was shocked by the verdict. The jury essentially found Heard had ”defamed” Johnny Depp and… I just can’t see it, frankly.

Johnny Depp’s career was already swirling the proverbial toilet well before her supposed ”defamation” of his character in the article she wrote about being an abuse victim.

Bear this in mind, folks: That’s what this entire trial was about, despite the fact that it got so out of hand with so many other things. Johnny Depp was suing Heard because he felt the editorial she wrote defamed him.

That’s it. That’s all.

One article.

This despite the fact that well before the article was written his career was essentially in the toilet and he had starred in one flop movie after the other. This despite the fact that there was ample evidence he was an in an incredible spiral involving drugs and alcohol and had become unreliable as an actor. That he wrote some truly horrendous text messages about Heard to friends. Messages that were as dark and bleak as can be. That he admitted to hitting her but now claimed he had ”blacked out” due to said drug use.

Convenient!

Was Amber Heard “abusive” to him? Quite possibly. They clearly had a very corrosive relationship but there was evidence she was trying to get him sober and, finally, simply gave up.

But, again, did she defame him with that article?

Really?

Now, her career and reputation is in the toilet, and all because -I strongly suspect- Depp and his people decided to go nuclear against her online. For a while there I couldn’t help but stumble into commentaries that were incredibly nasty and incendiary against her. I’m not the first person to wonder how many bots were hired/used to insult and, yes, defame Amber Heard through the course of this trail.

And isn’t it curious most have essentially disappeared following the verdict?

I also blame the judge for this. She allowed this trial to be televised which, given we are talking about abuse, and would involve deeply personal and embarrassing things related to not only Heard but also Depp, it shouldn’t have been presented to the public. In the end, televising the trail proved another way for those who had skin in the game to parse and rip apart any action Amber Heard took during the trail, up to and including her testimony.

Again, I don’t doubt this was a toxic relationship, but I find it incredibly difficult to accept that Amber Heard, and ONLY Amber Heard, was in the wrong here, especially given all the evidence presented against Johnny Depp in this trail. And especially given a similar trial was held in England against a newspaper and where it was found they had not defamed him when they said he was an abuser

*****

Elon Musk.

Oh, Elon Musk.

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll say it again: I have a Tesla Model 3. I recently purchased, for my wife, a Tesla Model Y.

I love both cars to death and feel they are a quantum step up from gas powered vehicles. Further, despite the many other EV models that have appeared of late, I believe at this moment in time and given their price and the wonderful Supercharger network, the Model 3 and Y are probably the best choices for EVs.

I really wish Mr. Musk would focus on the competition and try to make sure Tesla remains at the forefront of the EV revolution but it seems like he’s decided to be as out there as possible in the past few weeks.

First was his newfound ”conservative” political ideation.

Look, its fine to feel comfortable politically in one place or another. But Musk made most of his gains, and managed to get his company going, thanks to the very liberal state of California and the very liberal aid of the Obama/Biden administration. He received plenty of tax breaks and incentives to get his company moving and boy oh boy oh boy does it feel like he’s decided ”well, I got mine, screw everyone else”.

Suddenly he’s attacking ”liberal” ideology. For Mr. Musk, the timing couldn’t be worse given we’ve had the Roe v. Wade leak from the Supreme Court (I will get into that in a moment) and all the mass shootings which have resulted in the conservative ideologues doing their best to blame everything but the gun for these massacres.

It’s… all too typical, sadly.

Then there’s the whole Twitter silliness. With a great flourish Elon Musk announced he would purchase Twitter at a certain price and now he seems to be doing his best to backtrack and/or cancel those plans.

Again: You are a very busy man, Mr. Musk. You have a successful car company that has arguably shaken the entire auto industry from its internal combustion engine status quo. You have a space company that seems to be cutting edge. You even have satellites in outer space providing internet connectivity to Ukraine…

…why did you get into this Twitter mess?

I genuinely don’t understand the motivation or the end game here. Is Twitter really that important? I know many people have used it quite successfully (Donald Trump may not have become president without his ability to ”tweet”… which IMHO shows just how toxic it can be!) and Musk is among those who have used it to their advantage.

But his latest craziness is neither endearing or particularly helpful to his career and his companies.

*****

A few weeks back a shocking leak of Justice Alito’s opinion against Roe v. Wade, the decision which legalized abortion, was released. To this date, no one know who exactly leaked Alito’s first draft opinion and, tellingly, while we suspect the court will ultimately strike this very popular civil right (don’t believe me, just google it!), it doesn’t appear they have come close to figuring out who did this.

Currently, the Supreme Court’s popularity is at a low and part of the problem lies not only in this potential new ruling but because people increasingly view the Supreme Court as just another political apparatus versus the supposed ”fair umpire” that Chief Justice Roberts has tried to portray them as.

There is precedence regarding Roe v Wade, fifty years of it, and those much smarter than me who have read the Alito draft have noted some of the more specious arguments he makes to reject it.

But perhaps the very worst aspect of all this is the cool calculation made by Republicans, especially Mitch McConnell, to not allow Barack Obama his choice to bring Merrick Garland into the Supreme Court and, subsequently, the speed and hypocritical efficiency these same politicians had in bringing 3 new Justices to the court under the presidency of Donald Trump.

This ensured a very right tilting court and, frankly, it seems to me we’re going to soon see a ”what goes around comes around” type of situation. If the conservative justices are so quick to strike down precedence, they need to beware that this could be a two way street.

It may take a while but once the dam is broken, the waters unleashed could wash away just about anything in its path.

If precedence no longer matters in law, then where will this lead?

General

The latest big news…

Yeah, lots of news going on and haven’t been ’round these parts for a while now.

I suppose the two biggest issues of this day are the continued fighting in the Ukraine against Russia. It’s a horrible situation initiated by a lunatic who seemed to think he could just waltz into Ukraine with his mighty army and everyone would simply give up when faced with their overwhelming might.

The reality, if it weren’t for all the lives lost and cities destroyed, would be the stuff of bitter comedy. The Russian forces have been exposed as under-trained, ignorant of what they are doing (not their fault), and brutal (very much their fault). The fact that Ukraine looks to be about to go on the offensive and is only miles from the Russian border is yet another element that almost makes you want to laugh at the ineptness of the Russian forces… but again, only if we were to ignore the rapes, murders, general war crimes, and savagery this war has created.

Oh, and you gotta love how some Russian media is mulling the use of nuclear weapons as a potentially legitimate thing going forward.

Way to make a bad situation all the worse, eh?

Speaking of which, the leak a few days ago about Supreme Court Judge Alito’s Roe v Wade ruling, effectively gutting it, has also sent out shock waves across the country.

I suppose we once again have one of those “if it weren’t so fucking terrible it would be a comedy” type situations. Love this short video, presented on twitter, from The Daily Show…

The Daily Show on Twitter: “These judges make lying fun. It’s the Black Robe Comedy Tour!

Serious shit, truthfully, yet also hilarious because it’s so fucking true as well.

Alito and his ilk, as so clearly presented above, lied their way into their Supreme Court “jobs” and now are in hiding because of the furor of this ruling, something they claimed beforehand to “respect”.

I’ve noticed that some of the more right wing elements out there, for instance, the truck drivers who were creating blockades in Washington DC, were perplexed when people shouted at them and gave them the middle finger.

“How can you be against us when we’re trying to free you?” I recall one such demonstrator stated.

It’s a delusion, truly. A feeling that you know what’s right and everyone else is going to go your way, even though you clearly don’t know what’s right and a majority of people are very much against your actions and ideas.

The anti-choice crowd doesn’t get that but let’s see what happens in the upcoming elections. Their hubris might yet be their undoing.

One hopes.

Finally, there’s the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard trial.

For those living in a cave, Johnny Depp’s career has really sunk in recent years, partially because he’s been in a string of absolute stinker films and because, he claims in this lawsuit, of an editorial Amber Heard wrote which talked about -without mentioning Johnny Depp by name- being in an abusive relationship.

I can’t seem to wave a dead cat around the internet without smacking into Johnny Depp fanatics who are livid about Amber Heard and demand “justice” for Johnny and damnation for her.

And… I can’t understand it.

I’m not a Amber Heard “fan”. I’m not a Johnny Depp “fan”. I’ve seen a few of the things presented in trail so far and Johnny Depp, IMHO, strikes me as a deeply vindictive man who is trying his absolute best to destroy another person, that being Amber Heard.

His career, from what I’ve read and seen, was already very much on the rocks BEFORE that 2018 editorial came out which he claims so defamed him so already I’m wondering what this whole lawsuit is about.

There were plenty of stories about him allegedly being out of control on movie sets, of allegedly consuming mass quantities of alcohol and drugs and often supposedly arriving late to work without any idea of his lines or what he was even supposed to do. Interestingly, in the trail at one point he was asked about the movies he was recently in (perhaps to get at this point I just mentioned) and he replied he had no idea of the films he had just done and couldn’t name any recent works.

Weird.

A trail in England brought by him and against a newspaper over reports of him being abusive resulted in a very clear loss for Depp and a finding by the court that he was indeed abusive and therefore the paper he was suing had not defamed him by stating this.

I can’t help but think when all is said here in this trial, we’re going to see much the same result.

Is Amber Heard a “good” person? I truly don’t know. There is some evidence, I have read, for at least one pretty gross thing she is supposed to have done on his bed… but as gross as that is, is it abusive? Depp himself, of the stand, stated that he couldn’t help but “laugh” at that.

So… ok?

Depp claims she cut/slashed his finger, but there are contemporaneous tweets and interviews where Depp himself says he did it to himself. Was he lying then and isn’t now or is he lying now and wasn’t then? What are we supposed to believe in that case?

There are those who say both of them engaged in abusive acts and its certainly possible, but I wasn’t there nor were many of them so its kinda engaging in speculation, no?

One probably should let the trail work itself out and each side present their evidence and what happens will happen, whether Depp be vindicated or not.

Having said that, one thing I already feel works very much against Depp I’ve already mentioned above: The idea that Heard’s 2018 op-ed somehow was solely responsible for his career nosedive and not the many bad movie choices he made from roughly 2012’s Dark Shadows on.

I mean, not counting that film, these are some of the major movies he has been in since 2013:

The Lone Ranger (2013, a pretty big box office flop), Transcendence (2014 another box office flop), Into the Woods (2014 ditto), Mortdecai (2015, does anyone remember this one?), Black Mass (2015), Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them (2016… I suppose this one was a success, but was it in the league of the Harry Potter films in terms of box office? Also, if memory serves, he only appeared at the very end of this film in exactly one scene, no?), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017, a definite box office success but also the film where many of the stories of his alleged bad behavior on set and the need to use stand ins to get things done originated. Again, this movie was released a full year before Heard’s editorial), Murder on the Orient Express (2017, I suspect this film did well but it was a very big ensemble cast and Depp’s role was pretty small, though pivotal, as he was the murder victim), and, going into 2018, we had such minor fare as Sherlock Gnomes (a cgi animated film that I doubt many remember now), The Professor (has some decent reviews but does anyone remember this one?), and the more well-known Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (this is his last foray into the J.K. Rowling series as by this point he was indeed being viewed as toxic).

Anyway, a lesser actor may well have fallen far more quickly based on the string of unsuccessful works he was in along with the reputation -whether true or not- he had developed.

Either way, it’s in the news and a source of curiosity, certainly, if nothing much more.