F**k It, I'm Done With Twitter

I signed onto Twitter tonight to find the For You tab to be completely filled with anti-Semitic, pro-Russian, pro-Nazi filth.

That's Elon's October Surprise, and what he intended to do all along.

I'm out.

Merrick Garland Doesn't Know What He's Doing

 

It's true! He doesn't. Nor does Jack Smith, nor Letitia James, nor Fani Willis, nor Alvin Bragg, nor Jocelyn Benson, nor you, nor I.

We are in completely uncharted waters, and we don't know which strategy is going to work. Garland started bottom-up. Willis seemed to start in the middle. Bragg inherited his strategy. Smith decided to forget everything below the top. I thought they should've gone bottom-up but discrete tier by discrete tier (i.e. 1/6ers on the ground --> Oath Keepers/Proud Boys --> Alex Jones/Roger/Stone/etc --> Trump).

But no one has ever put a former President of the United States behind bars. The system doesn't make it easy to begin with, and we have a court system that's both way more conservative and way more backed up than it should be, and the majority of the Supreme Court is on that former President's side.

Out of all of these approaches, is Garland's right? I really don't know. But the solution is far from obvious, and 90% of the attacks against Garland aren't just wrong; they're lies. Are the other 10% right? I don't know about that, either.

All we have to go on is that a President has now been indicted by the current Department of Justice three times, and we're going to have to wait to see if this Attorney General's approach is the one that works. Or if more than one works. Or if none work.

Late Night Track -- Waste

 RIP Steve Harwell. He became a kook in his older age, but wrote a lot of good tunes.

Elon Musk is a Fascist Goat Banger and Suspends People He Doesn't Like

 

Well, I started this blog many years ago to write about something I never really have written much about -- the issues with consolidation in corporate America and the world.

For anyone who's not living in a cave, the former richest man in the world (his standing dropping every day), bought Twitter, one of the top social media companies in the world, and has begun using it as his own animal-fucking fiefdom. And despite his many protestations to the contrary, he's shown that he is a fascist who loves Nazis, hates many, many oppressed groups of people.

And tonight, he's begun suspending reporters who are calling him out. So I thought I'd do a public service and track all of the ones he's suspending. So here goes nothing (I'll be adding more as I see them):

-Aaron Rupar:

-Donie O'Sullivan, CNN:

-Ryan Mac, New York Times:

-Drew Harwell, Washington Post:

-Matt Binder, Mashable:

-Keith Olbermann:

-Micah Lee, the Intercept; and Tony Webster, FOIA specialist:

-Mastodon (a competitor to Twitter):

-Steve Herman, VOA News:

-Linette Lopez, Insider:

-Terry Cowgill, CTNewsJunkie:

Trump Sounds Like a Scary Wannabe Dictator...

 ... but at this point, he's kind of playing one on TV.

this is probably the most nakedly authoritarian thing Trump has ever posted pic.twitter.com/fnO5VbXyhX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 3, 2022

You know when someone does something nasty to you but you know there's really nothing you can do back to them so you just kinda smoulder by yourself for a while and think about what you could say to that person to put them in their place, though you know it's stupid to do so? He doesn't know it's stupid to do so, so he's saying those things.

Not Great, America

I haven’t listened to a Trump speech in a while but they way he spoke last night so favorably of executing drug dealers with after a short “two hours or less” trial and then sending the bullet they were shot with to their families was jarring.

— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) November 8, 2022

I'm kind of horrified today. Not of losing -- I really don't know what will happen. But of the fact that even if we win (and we might!), like 49% of our neighbors, co-workers, and most of the media are at least completely fine with fascism, brutality, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and anti-Semitism.

I live in a red area of a purple district of a blue state, and probably 70% of my neighbors think all these things are just peachy, and for many, many of them, they're what they crave.

EDIT: And the treason! How could I forget the treason?

Getting Theirs

I haven't written in a while, and I may start doing so again, but with big new hearings happening tomorrow and a lot of DOJ action going on, I want to say something here that I've said a lot in real life: We have become used to Trump and Republicans getting away with pretty much everything over the years, and it's jaded most of us. But even though some of these monsters are going to get off, and none are going to get everything they deserve, MANY Republicans will be facing consequences in the coming months, and while Trump will get away with a lot, and it will be infuriating, he will not get away with all of it. There's just too much, and he doesn't have the defenses he's used to having. And I think he knows it.

Earworm of the Afternoon -- Puffy Little Shoes

 

The Days That We Live In

So, this is a thing that happened. 

The President of the United States tries to ignore a huge pandemic that ends up killing perhaps a million Americans.

He shares crazy-ass ideas about how to deal with the pandemic he denies.

At a brazen public event in the middle of the pandemic, doing something about as odious any President has ever done, he, his wife, and their son catch the virus.

They try to hide the illness, but he gets too sick to deny it.

He is airlifted to Walter Reed.

The doctors gaslight the public on the stairs of Walter Reed about the President's health, and few really question it.

The doctors shoot him up full of steroids so that they can Weekend At Bernie's him around the hospital waving to his loving, feral supporters.

While propped up, he gets brought home and, with clearly labored breathing, rips his mask off for the camera to see.

Another hundred thousand people die. He pretends it's still not a big deal.

He *still* only loses the election by a pretty thin margin.

It comes out later, after hundreds thousands more die, that he had been very, very sick and it was really probably only due to the fact that he was one of the most powerful men in the world that he survived.

Oh, and he lies about getting a tube shoved up his ass because he doesn't want to look weak.

And not one question has been asked of his doctors since.

Yup, we lived through that.

Trying to Get Back to Normal

I'm a little OCD about a lot of things, and exercise is one of them. The minute it seemed we had to shelter at home for even three weeks, i started accumulating gym equipment at home, simplified my workouts, and just kept going.

I recently did some traveling post-vaccination, and did the same simplified workouts in empty hotel gyms. Yesterday I went to a real gym, the same one I went to for five years, for the first time since last March. I have done pretty much the same six workout cycle for 20 years. I forced myself through trying to piece back together one of my old routines, was completely disoriented, and hated every minute of it.

I went again tonight, did some cardio, looked at the weight machines again, and just walked out. I just did not have any interest in being in that environment, even though it was midnight and very few people were there. 

I don't know whether I'm going to ease back into it or just stick with the workout at home thing. It's not like I'm that afraid of COVID now (though I'm keeping my eye on the Delta variant); it just felt off. A lot of things do. Most things do.