Insurrectionist ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

2024 Beckons: In addition to being twice impeached, multiply indicted, and ruled a rapist, Trump has now been declared an insurrectionist by a judge in Colorado. That judge found that Trump engaged in insurrection during the January 6 attack on the Capitol but rejected an effort to keep him off the Colorado primary ballot because she’s not sure that the 14^th Amendment’s provision barring insurrectionists from public office applies to the presidency.  That’s not a view shared by everyone.  Respected conservative Judge Michael Luttig and Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe both believe that the 14^th Amendment pertains to presidents because what’s the point of the Amendment if it allows insurrectionists to become dictators but unless and until the Supreme Court agrees with them, Trump will stay on the ballot everywhere which is a bigly problem because despite his obvious failings and criminality, he’s coasting towards the Republican nomination and if polls are right, could also win the 2024 election over that “much” older guy who isn’t much older.  As to the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley is gaining in the polls, but that just means that she’s passing DeSantis, not that she’s anywhere near Trump who is still way ahead. In New Hampshire Trump is at 46% while the “surging” Haley is at 18%.  Sure, Trump still faces lots of legal problems but at least so far none of them are impeding his run which isn’t to say that they aren’t still out there.  On Friday Judge Arthur Engoron rejected Trump’s Hail Mary bid for a mistrial in NY AG Tish James’ civil fraud against him rejecting Trump’s assertion that a mistrial was warranted because Engoron and his law clerk are “politically biased.” Also on Friday, Fulton County DA Fani Willis filed a motion requesting an early August start date for her RICO trial of Trump and his remaining co-defendants, or those co-defendants who still remain by the time August rolls around.  In addition, newbie Speaker for now Johnson announced on Friday that he’ll start releasing all 40,000 hours of the tapes of the January 6 onslaught on the Capitol.  It’s unclear why Trump and his allies think that sharing those tapes is a good thing, but they do. Then again, the released tapes will reveal a lot about how to navigate the nooks and crannies of the Capitol, information that would help any future insurrectionists so maybe that’s part of why Trump thinks that their release is a good thing because who doubts that he’d be all in on another attack if the election doesn’t go his way in 2024?  We already know that if he gets back into the Oval Office, he’ll upturn the country’s governance and alliances and jail, or at least try to jail, his opponents and so on.  

Fog of War:  Israel has released tapes documenting a 55-foot long, 10-foot-deep tunnel under the Gaza Al Shifa hospital. They also shared pictures of two hostages, one being wheeled through the hospital another being “escorted” by five men, three of them heavily armed, with the other two likely medical professionals. The timestamp on that video is the morning of October 7.  Neither of those hostages, one Thai, the other Nepalese have been seen since.  In addition, two addition bodies of Israelis kidnapped on October 7 have been found on the hospital grounds.  Nevertheless, Hamas insists that they have no tunnels and if they had any they wouldn’t be under hospitals or near other civilian locations because they would never have tunnels or keep them stocked with ammunition, rocket launchers and suicide vests or anything like that because they are really nice even if they are homicidal terrorists?  And those working at the hospital, they too allege that their facility, or a children’s cancer hospital, would never house terrorists. We keep hearing that Hamas and Israel are near reaching a deal to free some hostages but so far bupkis (nothing for the Yiddish impaired).  More politicians, mostly “progressive” Democrats, and a whole lot of demonstrators some with swastikas just in case we don’t get their message, many at the same time yelling for the end of Israel are calling for a ceasefire, the ceasefire part being a noble concept because who opposes the ceasing of war and the ending of carnage.  But then again, does anyone really believe that Hamas whose charter calls for the obliteration of Israel will stop shooting missiles, killing, and hiding behind their own?  That’s the dilemma, one that is growing increasingly unsolvable. And sadly, the anti-Semitic component, evidenced by those swastikas isn’t just a left thing, it lives and grows on the right which explains Tucker Carlson spewing his hate during a recent interview with Candace Owens.        

Unsocial Media:  Disney, Paramount, NBC Universal, Comcast, Lionsgate, Warner Brothers Discovery, and Apple have all joined IBM in cutting or freezing their advertising on Elon Musk’s X (Twitter) over X’s placement of anti-Semitic messages near their ads and over Musk’s retweet of a post claiming that Jews were all in on replacement theory, the anti-Semitic trope that says Jews want to replace white people with “unsavory immigrants” of color. Think Charlottesville and those charming chanting neo-Nazi tiki torch carriers as well as the aforementioned Tucker and Candace. as well as this weekend’s neo-Nazi march in Madison, Wisconsin.  NBC Universal’s action is particularly notable because X CEO, Linda Yaccorino was previously responsible for pumping up advertising revenue at the company.  Yaccorino, who should resign X but hasn’t, insists that X “has been clear about its work to fight anti-Semitism and discrimination.”  Clearly, she’s delusional or being paid a lot to lie.  My money is on the latter.  The sad thing is that all those companies should have long ago stopped advertising on X because hate’s been out of control there ever since Musk took over so don’t be surprised if they slink back on while we’re busy with our Turkeys 🦃 🦃.  As to Musk whose most recent Space X rocket took a little longer to crash and burn this weekend, if X had a board, it would have fired him by now. That said, over the weekend we learned that some boards aren’t all that rational and that some governance structures are weirder than others when Sam Altman who is viewed as the J Robert Oppenheimer of artificial intelligence was fired by the maybe too idealistic board of OpenAI.  The company’s President Greg Brockman almost immediately followed Altman out the door in solidarity.  AI, or alternative intelligence, is all the rage these days with some, including those on the board of OpenAI fearing it’s destructive potential and by destructive, think HAL rather than students employing AI to write term papers.  The board feared that the widely respected Altman lacked their concerns or something like that. Their mistake is that they axed him without giving a heads up to or getting any input from their big investors, most notably Microsoft which recently committed to investing $10 billion in the company largely because of Altman. The board action freaked Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella who spent the weekend trying to unwind Altman’s firing.  He didn’t succeed so instead has hired Altman and Boardman to do their thing under the Microsoft banner, it’s likely that a lot of OpenAI’s techy geniuses will follow them to their new digs. So, if you see volatility in the tech markets, that’s probably why. A diversion from my usual focus but an irresistible one.

And:  There will likely be a vote on expelling George Santos after the 🦃 holiday though the results of that vote are still not a given.  New Jersey’s newest Democratic Senatorial candidate is Governor Murphy’s wife Tammy Snyder Murphy, a former Republican who seems to be attracting lots of donors because she’s got more name recognition than the other candidate, Congressman Andy Kim.  They’re both vying to replace the ethically challenged Senator Menedez who is still in office and shows no signs of leaving.

RIP Rosalynn Carter  

#BringThemHomeNow