The Gift That Keeps on Giving (Twitter)

I’m still following the Twitter riot, as nothing substantial seems to be happening in the realm of Trump-Russia.  Yes we are still averaging about one bombshell a week, but nothing ever seems to come of it.  You can always bet that by next week there will be another bombshell and this week’s will be forgotten; no one will be arrested or forced from office and the fact that we are paying billions to keep it all operating — when it isn’t — will continue to be ignored.  It’s gotten old.  The only thing I can guess is that taking down and possibly jailing up to half of Congress and the entire administration is something that will take time, but I also know that we don’t have time.  Remember the old saw about fiddling while Rome burns?  Yes.  That.

We are burning; parts of the country are literally drowning as well.  We are in an unprecedented crisis and nobody is really doing anything about it.  As an example, normally storms of the magnitude of Harvey are enough to end the careers of politicians who deal with them badly, but I’m guessing that somehow Trump will be exempt even from that rule (as was Bush).  And so the U.S. continues to plod toward Hell on glacial feet, even as the ice is melting.

Anyway, the past few days have actually been eventful on Twitter.  Two of the biggest purveyors of fake news — Louise Mensch of “Bannon’s getting the death penalty” fame, and Claude Taylor, better known as a ne’er do well photographer who allegedly fleeced this followers for a new minivan — were the subject of an acid article by a U.K. newspaper revealing that Taylor, and by extension Mensch, had as one of their “sources” a woman who openly admitted to being a fraud.  To his credit, Taylor admitted he’d made a mistake — thereby lending credence to the article before anyone could claim it was merely part of a smear campaign.  (To make matters even more murky, these campaigns have actually happened with independent journalists who have been smeared by major news outlets, often moments before a story broke that was originally revealed by the independent journalist.)

But Mensch?  Oh good lord…she threw Taylor under the bus, then got a bit quiet for about 24 hours before she resumed spouting barely-coherent conspiracy theories like nothing ever happened — and of course she (or one of her true believers) brought up the smear campaign angle even though Taylor had already admitted the article was true.  Taylor, btw, is now following the smear-campaign claim as well — at least I saw it in a thread he started.

Both of them lost followers, Taylor more than Mensch; but it appears that neither of them totally lost credibility.  Their true believers are still out there in droves, crowing that the Russians did it — to which I say yes, but not in the way you are thinking.

Meantime my other favorite Twitterer, who has not been openly discredited* but posted a tweet of sympathy to Mensch (who she claims hates her) anyway, went on and on about how it’s all about her and she’s being harassed by the head of the CIA and by the Nazi’s who said they would leave her alone if she joined them, and…and…

She claims she is also being treated for a nasty illness (or two or three).***  I’ve had friends and family members suffer serious and even terminal illnesses and I know better than to cast judgement over all patients who have serious diseases.  But sometimes…well I’ll tell you a story in a few paragraphs.

Back to our Twitterer, it turns out she’s one of those old-style evangelicals who thinks Masons are satanic (there were several Masons among the Founding Fathers), and of course she’s related to Trump and she’s friends with a Rothschild and she knows all about the “Collective” which is an evil cabal that Trump is a part of and the Rothschilds are harassing her and so is the head of the CIA, AND her friends have been murdered and…and…and…oh yes, she knows Mueller and he has told her all about the investigation!

Awfully important, isn’t she, for someone who is basically unknown.  And why are we hearing nothing about these murders (or arrests — she previously claimed that she felt safer because several people had been arrested — WHO?).

Story: I used to know a woman we’ll call Theresa.  This was decades ago.

Theresa was a great storyteller.  At that time I was still in my fan-girl stage, and we both liked a certain race-car driver.  In fact, Theresa headed up a fan club for the guy.  She told lengthy tales about how she knew him and went to school with him, etc.  She kept me on the phone for 3 hours once, regaling me with tales of the race car driver (this was pre-Internet).

Then Theresa lost her battle with cancer, and in the following months I found out that her cancer was the only thing she’d ever told me the truth about.  I heard from another member of the fan club who told me that after Theresa died, several club members had contacted the race-car driver’s manager who said that neither he nor his client had ever heard of Theresa.

It would never occur to most people with potentially fatal illnesses to build up legends about themselves, but a few of them do.  (Hell, even perfectly healthy people do that.)  I know this happened with Theresa, and I’m wondering if that’s what is happening with this Twitterer.***

That’s a serious charge, kind of like the one leveled against Taylor and Mensch, but as this person does not appear to be making money off the situation**, maybe not as serious.  But how else does it make sense?  This is a totally unknown woman claiming to be at the center of the Trump scandal, after all.

The thing I’m getting at is that she’s obviously lying about some or all of it…and getting away with it with a significant number of fans.  Why does this matter?  See the “fiddling while Rome burns” paragraph above.

Someone else wrote a commentary about the Taylor-Mensch situation, crowing that it proved liberals are as stupid and gullible as conservatives and nyah, nyah, nyah.  I congratulate the author of this commentary on his/her personal perfection, and here’s another thing: additional congrats on totally missing the point.

There are a certain number of people on both sides who are always going to internalize the lies and defend them no matter what comes to light.  We’ve seen it with Trump, and we’ve seen it with Taylor (I exclude Mensch, who is an unrepentant neocon and I’m honestly not sure who her most rabid fans might be, numerous as they are).

The thing is, the rest of us need to treat them as entertainment only.  Take nothing they say seriously.  Keep your eyes on the real threats — Trump, Russia, corruption, and the slow pace with which it’s all being handled — and just sit back and watch these other people and giggle.  And if Twitter wants to become the official outlet for silly non-news, let them.  Twitter is just there for commerce and a giggle, after all.

The truth will come out in the end, however slowly.   It’s whether our country will still be here and intact by that time that is the question.  This is what we need to be pondering.  The rest of it is just fluff.

Enjoy yourself at the expense of Mensch, Taylor, and this other person, but keep your eye on the real story.  That’s all I ask.

* yes she has

** found this article, which talks about this particular Twitterer at length.  I actually found it with the subject Twitterer, “Hepzibah’s,” help; she posted the link while claiming the article had been thoroughly debunked by herself and her friends.  All I can say is, Hepzibah’s arguments are always specious at best — and her best moments are rare.  At worst they are often downright fraudulent; for example her claim of the past few days that hurricanes Harvey and Irma have been created by HAARP.  (Oh yeah?  Then why is IRMA HEADING STRAIGHT TOWARD ONE OF TRUMP’S PROPERTIES and MAY IN FACT HIT TWO MORE AFTER THAT ONE?  You’d think he’d have protected himself!)

That, on top of all the Rothschilds crap and other garbage she’s been spewing (including minimizing Russia’s role in Trump’s election), made me grateful that she inadvertently steered me toward what appears to be a very calm, reasoned, well-researched and plausible explanation of herself and what she’s after.  So read the linked article before you encounter this person on Twitter…because if you’re in the Resistance, you will.

***again, read the article; some interesting insights there into Hepzibah’s claimed illnesses and what may actually be going on.

P.S. Here’s another blog article from last spring tackling the subject of Hepzibah

 

Wheels: off

I don’t think we have a president anymore.

Not that we’ve had much of a president in the past several months, but whatever we did have — any illusion of power — is gone.  Even the supposed hordes of angry white boys (now properly identified as Nazis) he was either directly or indirectly threatening us with if we did not fall into line and let him do whatever he pleased…well, that threat is turning out to be minuscule.  For instance, yesterday’s attempted bullying of Boston ended with about 100 would-be bullies being escorted away through a crowd of about 40,000, to the mocking sound of tuba music.

That is to say that even if there were more of them, they still wouldn’t scare anybody.

Trump himself is nothing but a bully.  He never was anything more, and he never had any plan for anything.  That wall, for instance?  They’re already flying drones filled with drugs into the U.S.  A wall can be dug under if they want to transport humans.  It’s an expensive waste of resources and money, and it’s a distraction.  Anyone still harping about the wall is a fool.  This isn’t China in 221 BC.

That’s not the only issue.  Apparently his poor excuse for an Education Secretary, DeVos, has an evil brother who wanted to approach Trump with an idea that he (DeVos’s brother) would be a sort of viceroy in Afghanistan and keep the peace and raid their considerable mineral resources for a nice little salary of TEN BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.

Since Trump is so incredibly stupid, he might have thought it was a good idea…but McMaster blocked DeVos’s brother’s access to Trump, so the deal is a no-go for the time being.  Not that they won’t try again, though, if given enough time.  At least now we know why the woefully unqualified DeVos is in the Cabinet, though, aside from the fact that her family made massive contributions to Trump’s campaign.

Do you really want a president who is that stupid?

All Trump sees is money, and after that, power.  He’s been pretty much stripped of his power at this point, but he’s still eyeballing the money.  For him the presidency has been nothing but the ultimate money-grubbing scheme, and he’s continuing to do it.

How does Russia fit into the scheme?  Easy — Putin is a corrupt billionaire, and Trump (who is not a billionaire) owes him and/or his mob buddies a ton of…you got it…money (SEE LINKED ARTICLE ABOVE).  This is all this whole thing was ever about.

It was not about making America great again (by reversing everything the black guy did, because the only thing almost as powerful to Trump as money and power is his jealousy of Obama.  He hates the guy.)

The very real criminal here, outside of Trump, Putin, various Trump cronies and several very corrupt Republicans in positions of power in Congress, is the right-wing media.  This is a more delicate matter, as we do have the Constitution standing in the way of our access to them.  But they must be neutered, even if it takes massive boycotts and protests to do it.  And they will be.  I’d like to see some of them charged with treason, too, but that is unlikely and could set a dangerous precedent.  Better to just discredit them to the point where they don’t even have as much credibility as your average reality show, and their supporters turn slightly pink in the cheeks while trying to defend the indefensible — kind of like an increasing number of Trump supporters are doing now, sometimes to the tune of tuba music.

As for Trump and his cronies, the matter is less delicate.  He’s now nothing more than a broken-down actor waiting for the stage hook.  It’s just a matter of making those with the power realize that Trump has to be dragged off the stage sooner rather than later (he will not resign).  This is because as powerless as he is, he’s still a figurehead, and as long as he’s there, there will be more and more trouble because his cronies, and his sycophants, and his buddies in Congress are still there and up to some very nasty business under the cover of “president” Trump.  It is, of course, part of the problem that most of these people are as corrupt as Trump, and not as stupid.

But he needs to be gone.  Let’s get to it.  Now.

 

Cruel Reality

It was revealed a few weeks ago, I think, that Mueller had appropriated (for lack of a better word) a grand jury that was originally assembled in New York State – I still don’t know if this is the one investigating potential Trump family financial crimes or not, but it seems likely.  A few days ago it was revealed that Mueller also has his own grand jury, and it is issuing subpoenas in the Trump/Russia case.  Meantime some grand jury somewhere is investigating Flynn and has been for months.  I’m guessing that one is on the federal level because it probably is looking at possible treasonous activities.

Whatever.

Of course Mensch and Taylor are now crowing that they got the story first, months ago, before Mueller was hired as Special Counsel.  Somehow they always leave that part out, as well as the parts about the sealed indictments — which no less than Preet Bahara dismissed as poppycock — and that thing about Bannon getting the death penalty (for what???  He hasn’t even been charged with anything!) and that business about the Supreme Court being involved.  (They aren’t.  Really.)

We know who assembled the grand jury in New York State, so I’m talking about the Flynn one.  The fact is Mueller didn’t do it.  Therefore, linking the grand jury story to the story of Mueller’s grand jury(ies) is ridiculous.  No one can crow that they told us about this months ago, because if they did their reporting was incomplete.  Yes somebody was working on this, but obviously so secretly that even Louise Mensch had no idea what they were doing.  The fact is, nobody knew.   We were left to guess and judge by Flynn’s actions and those of others involved in the situation (asking for immunity, etc.).

And in the past few days there has been the other thing…the fresh exhumation of human trafficking and child molestation stories involving Trump and those in his circle.  Mensch has jumped on that bandwagon as well, which is interesting because this brings us to our other Twitter-monger, the one who keeps posting about these things in relation to Trump, and blaming one of the Rothschilds for everything.  She is now claiming that the human trafficking story is what will bring Trump down; that the Trump-Russia thing is actually no big deal.  She also claims to be seriously on the outs with Mensch, who is now trying to claim the same thing — that the trafficking charges will bring Trump down and to hell with Russia.

*sigh* this brings me to the point…

This Trump-Russia story IS the biggest story of any of our lives, and it WILL bring the Trump administration crashing down, possibly taking at least a large portion of the Republican Party with it.  No rape/child molestation/human trafficking story will do that, unfortunate as it is to have to say such a thing.  If personal crimes (unrelated to Trump-Russia) any effect on Trump at all, it will be after he is removed from office.

Further, I’ve written about this several times and I’ll repeat it:  this crap on Twitter has got to stop and the only way it will stop is if people stop falling for it.  This Trump-Russia story is not about any of these people on Twitter who seem to be attempting to make a living off of it.  It is about all of us; it is about our nation’s sovereignty; it is about the survival of the constitution as our foundation and of the presidency as something more than a ceremonial head of state (and it should be noted that Trump is failing in that limited capacity as well; he simply has no grasp on what he is supposed to be doing).

That last point — the reduction of the office of the president to nothing more than a ceremonial role — is not being discussed, but it should be.  While it’s true that half of Congress seems to be as ensnared by Russia as is the Trump administration, it’s also mysteriously true that they are acting to tie Trump’s tiny hands so that he cannot fire or appoint anyone, can’t remove sanctions, can’t start a war to distract us, etc.  I’m not entirely sure why this is happening when so many of them are beholden to Russia, but there it is: right now we have a president whose only power is his tweets.

While it protects us in the present, it may have a scary impact on the future.  This is the important stuff.  No, I am NOT saying that issues such as human trafficking and child molestation aren’t horrendous crimes and deserve no attention, but the fact is that they are not what is going to bring Trump down.  Anyone who claims otherwise fails to realize that our constitution protects itself first and the rest of us by extension (because it has to; we don’t live forever, but the constitution does).  Bringing Trump down for personal crimes is not going to save the government, nor reverse the damage he has done and that Congress is doing in order to prevent him from wrecking things further.  Bringing him down for obstruction of justice and/or treason will save our government by nullifying everything that has happened.  The rest of the charges, as long as they are in no way connected to Trump-Russia, can occupy the rest of his life — and that is as it should be.

Anyone on Twitter (or elsewhere) claiming otherwise is full of shit and out for their 15 minutes of fame.  They are no better than Trump.  We need to keep our eyes on obstruction of justice and treason, which are definitely “high crimes” that will take Trump out of office and hopefully erase him from history except as a footnote and a warning.  The rest of it will be the stuff that will make Trump personally miserable and possibly keep him in jail for the rest of his life if the obstruction/treason charges don’t do the job.  We can hope for no more.