Trump – Page 6 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Turn Out The Lights. The USA is Done.

Now we pick kings and queens and not presidents.

It’s over folks. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that we elect kings and queens and not presidents who are subject to the law. We now live in an autocracy, or a dictatorship, or perhaps it’s just an unreal reality show.

Designer (1).

It’s a byzantine ruling picking the nits between personal and official acts in the way only lawyers can pick nits, but the essence of it is this: Given how our legal system is what it is, a president can act, stall for time and never be held accountable for it legally. Sure, Congress can impeach (this will ratchet up that clown show), but that only removes someone from office. Legally a president can do whatever they want as long as they can use the legal system to mask personal actions as official acts. I hate to tell you, that’s easy to do. Nixon is rolling over in his grave.

Folks will call it a mixed bag. Folks will debate the what if’s. There are no what if’s. The Supreme Court of the United States just told any president, including Donald Trump that they can grab the country by the pussy. Just declare it official.

Turn out the lights. The party’s over. The world and the history of humanity just changed.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Steering clear of politics (mostly) here’s some Sunday Morning Reading to share.

It’s a tough weekend to put this Sunday Morning Reading column together in the wake of last week’s U.S. Presidential debate. I’ve never seen so many knees jerk so violently at once leading me to assume there are quite a few bruises caused from crashing them against computer desks. So, I’ll be avoiding politics this morning. Perhaps. Maybe. We’ll see.

Did you know that milk is the latest front in the culture wars dividing America? Tony Diver tells us how.

Yes, it’s political but no, it isn’t about recent events specifically, so once again I highly recommend you check out The Split by Steve Radlauer and Ellis Weiner. The Split, now up to Chapter 34, is a terrific serialization of all things political, social, and well… all things.

James B. Stewart and Benjamin Mullen take a long look at the future of streaming in The Future of Netflix, Amazon and Other Streaming Services. It’s a worth your time kind of read even though it takes awhile, but it more than hints that none of the titans of this industry has a clue.

The entertainment industry isn’t the only place run by folks without a clue. Check out The Federal Reserve’s Little Secret by Rogé Karma. Apparently those folks pulling the strings on interest rates don’t have much of one either.

And speaking of titans of industry and god-like powers David Todd McCarty thinks If Someone Asks If You’re A God, You say Yes.

On the Artificial Intelligence front Wired has been doing some good work lately reporting on on that front. Check out Lauren Goode and Tom Simonite’s This Viral AI Chatbot Will Lie and Say It’s Human.

Also check out Elizabeth Lopatto’s Perplexity’s Grand Theft AI. Sounds human to me.

Joan Westenberg has an interesting think piece on the misconstruing and appropriation of the message of George Orwell’s 1984 in “This Is Just Like 1984.” Great piece.

I said I’d avoid the political hot potato of the presidential debate. It’s not that I lied, or changed my mind, it’s that this piece is too good to not recommend. Check out Natasha MH’s view in The US Presidential Debate Reminded Me of My Divorce.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

The Alito Supreme Court Is Setting Up For A Dobbsian Replay

The Alito Court may be about to repeat the mistakes of 2022.

History may be about to repeat itself. Hopefully it rhymes. Donald Trump is a convicted felon and he and his fluffers are doubling down on their attempts to manufacture a fantasy world that bears no resemblance to the one most people live in. Yet we’re still waiting a decision from the Supreme Court on whether or not U.S. presidents have immunity and thus are kings who can round up and possibly kill political rivals, deport anyone they desire, and generally turn the U.S into a autocracy staffed by criminals.

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While that immunity case has no bearing on the New York case that added 34 convictions to the decaying orange turd’s résumé, it is all tied together because there’s this thing called an election in a few months wherein we’ll decide if America still exists as a democracy.

The Supreme Court hasn’t issued an opinion yet, which in and of itself is an opinion. In delaying action they’ve effectively sided with Trump, allowing any real chance of a trial to be pushed off until after the election. But unfortunately they have to make a decision before they can head off to their yachts for the summer.

What’s intriguing to me is I think the Alito Court is about to make the same political mistake they made in 2022 with their decision removing women’s rights to an abortion in Dobbs vs. Jackson. It was a victory for abortion foes, but energized the electorate enough to wash away any Red Wave in the 2022 elections and others that have followed since. My suspicion is if the Alito Court grants anything resembling immunity to Trump, we’ll see the same sort of rage-fueled energy at the polls in November. There’s enough of that energy already bubbling, but this might (should) blow the lid off the pot.

It’s June, SCOTUS is heading to the end of this term, and an announcement could come any day as the court traditionally rolls out decisions from the current term. The hen-pecked Alito is under fire for flying insurrectionist adjacent flags while blaming his wife, further degrading any sense of integrity the Supreme Court had remaining. I’m thinking (and hints suggest) the decision will be in Trump’s favor thus completely erasing what few bits of integrity still remain on the white board. If they do, it will hopefully ignite the electorate again to finally cancel this unreality show we’ve all been living through.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Trump Guilty: Everything Changes Everything Remains The Same

A stench that will never fade.

Yesterday’s unanimous jury verdicts convicting former President, rapist, and con artist Donald Trump changed everything and changed nothing. Beyond the damage to the decaying orange turd’s branding (he should now always be introduced and referred to as “Convicted Felon”) the MAGA political world is still living in their own warped reality. It’s historic and full of histrionics.

We shouldn’t really be surprised. Some say it’s a fear of Trump’s wrath. For the compromised I’m sure that’s true. What’s more dangerous is the larger group who want to use Trump as a bludgeon to beat back and down what they definitiely fear more. They don’t like him, they just want to take advantage of his blustering bumbling to hang on to their plantation mindset. They fear their idea of an America is under threat by too many anyones who don’t look, act and think like them. Make no mistake. That fear is tangible.

It’s led to abandonment on some sort of cosmic political level and defies the laws of political gravity. They’ve abandoned any sense of the virtue that this country’s founders believed was the key ingredient to the idea of America. They’ve abandoned any sense of shame. They’ve abandoned any sense of good sense, common or calculating. They’ve twisted and turned themselves into enough knots that there’s no way to untangle the mess they’ve put us in without cutting off some piece of anatomy they might need later. I’d argue they need thoughts and prayers, but they’ve abandoned and defiled thinking and praying.

The verdict wasn’t predictable. They never are. The MAGA reaction to it was. It’s a script written for bad characters that that have crossed beyond the borders of caricature and cliché into some other definition that the human experience and literature hasn’t been able to label yet.

The bottom line in all of this is that on May 30, 2024 in a courtroom in New York City an asshole got his ass handed to him in a court of law and the reaction to that proves his ass wipers obviously enjoy the smell so much they will still stand in line and fall over themselves to be the first to wade deeper into his offal. It’s a stench that will never fade.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

The GOP Nominee for President Donald Trump Guilty On 34 Counts.

Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for the office of President of the United States is guilty on all 34 counts in his New York trial. He is now a convicted felon. Certainly he will appeal. Certainly he will wail. But he is now a convicted felon, that under Florida law can’t vote for himself as President.

CleanShot 2024-05-30 at 16.40.41@2x.

This isn’t over. Sentencing will be July 11th. But this is a big day in American hisotry and the history of bunkum artists and conmen. May they all rot in hell.

The image is from the front page of The Drudge Report.

Imagining the Unimaginable Isn’t That Much of a Challenge

It really requires a lack of imagination to see how things are going to play out with SCOTUS

I wrote a little something for Rome Magazine on Medium on why it’s not so hard to imagine the unimaginable when it comes to what the Supreme Court is going to do in the Trump case. It really requires a lack of imagination to see how things are going to play out in this specifically and in most so-called unimaginable situations in life. It’s just easier to deny we lack the imagination to see accept what the possibliites are.

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Check out When The Unimaginable Comes Knocking and other great writing in Rome Magazine.

Thanks to David Todd McCarty for giving me the forum.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Axis of Chaos

Putin. Trump. Netanyahu. The Axis of Chaos. Absent chaos none of these men would be terrorizing their countries, their citizens, and the world. They’ve more than proven that the best way to stay in power is to sow chaos. They may one day reap the whirlwind, but currently they survive by tossing the world into a toilet bowel of turbulence.

They each need each other to continue churning the chaos mill so that they can continue creating and profiting from their own, simultaneously mocking any attempts at accountability.

Both Putin and Netanyahu despise Trump as much as they need him to keep the United States, and thus the rest of the world spinning off kilter. The Russians call tools of Trump’s ilk “useful idiots” and if you ask me he’s exhausted the cliché. That famous photo of Trump in the Oval Office laughing as if he’s in on the joke is one of the funniest and most iconic displays of his ignorance of his own impotence.

Putin doesn’t need Trump because he’s a clever ally with mutually aligned goals, beyond their desires for self-enrichment. He needs Trump because he’s a bumbling behemoth of bombast he can reliably count on to stir things up and keep all eyes unable to focus. It’s the old magician’s distraction trick. The same with Netanyahu. Both he and Putin recognize that they have an easy mark, easy to pay, easy to play.

Trump thinks he needs each of them for the same reasons. But being the awareness-deficient clod that he is, he doesn’t realize he’s being played for a fool. It’s easy for him to think he’s in the gang given the seemingly endless supply of his own useful and idiotic lickspittles leeching off him. None of them, regardless of whom they serve, seem to notice when others get tossed aside or unceremoniously fall out of windows.

That’s what chaos agents and charlatans have always thrived on: wanna-be hangers-on thinking they also have a chance at grabbing the brass ring.

If the three disappeared in a poof of dust overnight, the world would still turn on its somewhat more predictable axis. Certainly part of it would turn in on itself trying to sort out a way forward, perhaps creating a wobble or two. But it would still turn. Spinning in such circles has become so disgustingly normal that it has numbed most of us into inaction as we try to find an always illusive balance.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Confrontation Nation

The intimidation tactics and strategy have worked far too well.

Judges. Pastors. Politicians. Every day Joe and every day Jane. People feel threatened by rhetoric spewing out of mouths like lava out of a volcano. It’s an insult to the concept of rhetoric, just another in the long list of “life as we knew it” torched by the angry mob.

The threats multiply daily and there’s no system or institution that can contain them so we might as well quit pretending and waiting around for the fire brigade. Like it or not the decaying orange turd and his worshippers are taking everything down with them. Scorched earth. It’s only going to get worse and there’s no “before it gets better” on the horizon.

The intimidation tactics and strategy have worked far too well. Judges can toss down a gag order, but they’re doing so behind security details and burdened by a judicial system that’s melting under the heat and buckling under its own burden. Pastors can preach for patience and penitence, but those that follow the lessons of scripture are being overwhelmed and overmatched by their own brethren who’ve reduced to ashes the messages of the Gospel, or any other good book, while profiting from the pulpit. As for politicians, let’s just say I don’t think there are anymore feet remaining worth holding to the fire.

This approaching calamity too many are trying to avoid is coming one way or the other. It’s just a matter of when.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Stocks, Shoes, and Bible Bunkum

A fool and his money are soon parted the saying goes. That’s obviously an understatement that didn’t come close to anticipating the gullibility of large swathes of the American public. There are obviously flocks of fools out there begging to be fleeced by this conman-in-chief Donald Trump. In the last few weeks, supposedly facing financial peril due to the increasingly large legal fees and judgments against him, he’s managed to roll out sales pitches for trashy shoes, launch an IPO for his solipsistic social media network, and now bibles. I just don’t get the fascination with throwing good money after such bad bunkum.

It makes you wonder if all of these folks somehow drank Trump branded water or ate Trump steaks at some point in their lives that contained some sort of additive that bound them to him in some weird way. That makes it sound like bad fiction, but I just find it hard to believe that there are enough minutes in any given day for this many suckers to be born.

Sure, some folks are going to make some money from the Truth Social stock deal. Many more will lose their shirts. I imagine those Trump bibles will one day get passed down through a few familes here and there. Everyone needs a door stop or two. I can’t comment on the shoes, because there’s no rational excuse for anyone who thinks that’s a remotely attractive way to spend money or adorn their feet. But the conman who owns the courts, bilks his creditors, and gives lie to the concept of shame, just keeps on conning and his flock keeps lining up to be sheered.

If we saw any or all of this in a movie or TV show most would change the channel. But then Reality TV is how this whole thing kicked off in the first place.

We are not serious people. But this guy is a serious serial shyster.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

There’s No Happy Endings For This Trump Fairy Tale

Yowsa did the howls go up! Trump’s bond in the civil fraud case got reduced on appeal from $454 million to $175 million and he got a ten-day stay before he has to cough up the dough. If the intital judgment had been for $175 million instead of $454 million I’d bet we see this differently today if that amount had been upheld. But that’s fiction. In a werid Sartre-esque reality show of our own making. And it shouldn’t be surprising.

That’s how screwed up we’ve allowed this sad excuse of a man to warp most of the world around us. On every conceivable level. We can continue to pretend the institutions we’ve relied on will offer some protections from the likes of this decaying orange turd and someday after he’s gone the world returns to a better place. But he’s crushed any hopes of that. At least for a few generations. Besides it’s a fiction he’s exposed, not one he’s created. Most fairy tales don’t end with happily ever after.

Yes, this vedict is a lifeline. Yes, it seems like he’s getting a break. And you know what? He is. And he will continue to get them. He might one day be held accountable for all of this, but I’m betting not whle he’s still breathing. Life ain’t fair damnit, especially when you’re trying to play by the rules and the other side doesn’t give fuck all about rules.

One of these days we’ll learn that. It will be messy. But at least it’ll be more honest.

Meanwhile: The judge in the porn star hush money case that trial will begin jury selection on April 15th. And so it goes.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.