Slime Time 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

🌻 🌻 🌻:  The who made the decision to slowdown Ukraine’s Starlink capabilities saga continues.  The Wall Street Journal reports that it was Elon Musk who acted, sparking “panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the Trump administration” while leading to the death of Ukrainian citizens including a baby in a stroller.  Trump, who verbally attacks Ukraine’s Zelenskyy daily while cozying up to Russia’s Putin, is sort of standing by his denial that he had anything to do with the decision, however, the WSJ reports that while Musk was the one who actually pulled the lever, he did so after talking with Trump.  It sounds like the two had a “who will rid me of this meddlesome priest moment” with Trump acting the part of Henry VIII and Musk, who shares Trump’s antipathy to all things Ukraine, eagerly stepping into the role of murderous knight. “King” Trump now has his sights set on playing the role of FDR at a Yalta type conference where he together with Putin and Xi will carve Ukraine into pieces, giving Russia all the regions it wants.  Trump is no FDR and the conference shouldn’t happen but it might because as much as Ukraine’s fate shouldn’t fall to others, Putin wants it to and Trump for whatever the reason, lucrative business opportunities or just dictator envy, wants to please Putin while hanging out with Xi, the world power that unlike the diminished Russia actually has boatloads of money, resources, and power.  As also reported by the WSJ and as evidenced by his other devious actions, Putin craves more than Ukraine.  Over the summer he tried but fortunately failed to destroy a “massive” military cargo plane at Germany’s Leipzig-Halle airport and he’s been conducting a campaign of sabotage and covert action against NATO countries.  Naturally, none of that concerns Trump because if Putin’s doing it, it must be okay.  Sure, a number of Republican members of Congress, mostly outgoing ones, are upset about Trump throwing Ukraine under the bus, but those guys feign distress a lot. Whatever happens during the midterms, Trump will still be calling the shots for two more years and it’s growing increasingly obvious that he cares little about Congressional or Judicial pushback.

Midterm Madness:  Though the pollsters continue to predict that a blue wave amped by a red undertow is coming, Trump appears to have woken up and is loosening his pockets to the tune of an additional $277 million. He’s ramped up his travel to mostly red areas, or areas that are supposed to be red, where in addition to delivering unhinged messages that include truly odd observations about the butts and other physical attributes of Republican candidates, he’s making more financial promises to voters.  On Monday, Trump said he would send $8 billion in direct payments to farmers and because irony is truly dead, on Tuesday, he announced a program that would provide up to $30,000 to any Americans who provides a tip about government fraud, assuming of course that the identified fraudsters aren’t any members of his family or immediate entourage. Why would they be since VP Vance who heads the administration’s anti-fraud task force says he’s not aware of any Trump’s committing any 🤷‍♀️ 🤦‍♀️.  Those “incentives” follow his early $1 trillion proposal to send $5,000 to each adult citizen if Republicans hold the Senate and House, the $90 he’s already sent to lots of Medicare recipients to offset premiums and the $500 to nearly one million people for “excessive” Obamacare fees. Remember when Republicans cared about the country’s debt, #Fuhgeddaboudit.  Last night at a rally in North Carolina Trump also said that if Republicans keep their majorities, he will fast-track claims veterans have brought against the US over contaminated water at the state’s Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base. His handpicked North Carolina Senate candidate/former RNC Chair Michael Whatley is expected to lose to Democrat Roy Cooper, the state’s popular former Governor, so that promise will likely remained unfilled. Keeping with the theme of trying to buy votes, Musk has announced plans to give one share of SpaceX to every child in America starting next year. The pledge could total roughly $10.5 billion to $11 billion based on a share price around $146–$148.  That’s nice but it’s chump change for trillionaire Musk whose company’s value relies on lots of government contracts. We’d be better off if he’d just pay a reasonable amount of taxes, paid for his own data centers, and followed Mackenzie Scott Bezos’ example of giving money to good causes, or instead of stripping funding from medical research and other worthy causes funded them. Providing further proof that irony is truly dead, yesterday ProPublica reported that some Trump appointees tried to get CISA, the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, to obtain and then hack a voting machine so that they could then “prove” that elections could be hacked but the CISA people refused while also pointing out that because of Musk’s DOGE efforts there were no people left at CISA who could do the hacking.      

More 💩: On the subject of false statements and despicable acts, Vivek Ramaswamy the Republican presidential candidate for a few Scaramucci’s who is running for Governor in Ohio, in a neck and neck race with his rival Democrat Amy Acton went about as low as you can go yesterday, releasing an ad featuring Acton’s abusive mother throwing slime on her “honesty.”  Acton has long been estranged from her mother who took her stepfather’s side after he raped her when she was twelve years old, an account that her brother quickly verified yesterday when he rushed to her support. The stepfather who has since died was arrested and both Acton and her brother were permanently removed from their mother’s custody as a result of the rape and abuse.  Ramaswamy is facing some backlash for his comments, but he stands by them and his campaign plans to spend an additional $4 million distributing his ad because apparently standing by rapists and their abettors rather than victims is increasingly a thing among what Georgia’s Jon Ossoff calls the Epstein Class. Last week one time Trump lawyer, faux New Jersey US Attorney Alina Habba alleged that Trump’s one time Ambassador to Germany/Kennedy Center head Ric Grennell had pocketed $6 million that had been “donated” by her newest husband instead of depositing it into the art center’s account. Yesterday, the NY Times reported that while still employed by the Department of Justice, Habba had engaged in some grift of her own, “allegedly” accepting money and a $50 million contract for what looks like a no-show job from the family of Venezuelan billionaire Julio Herrera Velutini in exchange for helping him obtain a pardon from Trump for his fraudulent activities. It can’t be a coincidence that the Habba pay for pardon story is appearing now, just days after she threw Grennell under the bus. Fun to watch these horrible people slime each other.