In 2016 we had But Her Emails. In 2024 we have Biden Is Too Old. The sources of these two lines haven't changed: the flailing GOP with an assist by bothsiderist news media.

Yes, it's the same old distraction technique to draw attention away from the leader of the Republican Party who is an adjudicated sex offender who just lost a gigantic lawsuit based on his past use of fraud.

It's time to push back and aggressively. And successful messaging is repetitious messaging – get used to repeating things if you wish to cut through the noise.

But the main thing is not to freak out and to play offense instead of being defensive. For example: Why are so few people on our side bringing up Trump's unhealthy lifestyle? Drinking 12 Diet Cokes® a day and copious chomping of double cheeseburgers wouldn't be recommended for somebody half his age. And what kind of drugs is he being prescribed?

[A]ll of the #BidenTooOld coverage is about as new and revelatory as #ButHerEmails. If nothing else, it proves that a scandal holding that the president forgets things is always going to go down smoother than a scandal in which a special counsel flagrantly violated a long-standing Justice Department practice and protocol not to “criticize uncharged conduct.” As Sullivan was quick to point out, CNN and the New York Times and every U.S. corporate media entity and its cousin jumped onto the bandwagon. [ ... ] Perhaps one way to navigate yourself through this seemingly insoluble morass would be to ask yourself why Biden, who is stipulated #Old, has managed to helm the most successful presidency in modern history. Booming economy, eye-popping jobs reports, first gun violence reduction bill in decades, $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan plus COVID relief, Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure prioritized, judges seated. Pick your metric—there have been a lot of wins. And the reason this old man who sometimes forgets things like dates has gotten all this done? He has, for the most part, surrounded himself with experts, genuine scientists, respected economists, and effective governmental actors and advisers. Governance is not an action film. There is no minute-to-minute psychodrama involving someone in a tight black T-shirt mincing along the outdoor ledge of a skyscraper, ninja-kicking his lonely way down to the stairwell, where he karate-chops the well-armed baddies and then commando crawls his way into an empty vault with the glass chest where the nuclear reactor sits. No. Despite our fascination with the Great Man theory of American lawmaking, the presidency is an office that largely turns on superb staffing, visionary planning, deft political negotiation, and artful execution. Joe Biden doesn’t actually have to remember every single detail himself—he has to use his judgment to employ and empower a large contingent of skilled experts to execute upon their agreed-upon vision. If you are unconvinced, the best evidence that we keep falling for Great Man fantasy propaganda is the unmitigated failure of the first Donald Trump presidency. Here we had a self-described loner literally trumpeting his I-alone-can-fix-it worldview, all embodied in Great Man megalomania. He managed to accomplish virtually nothing: Almost none of his promises for single-handed economic revitalization, world domination, or intrepid urban crime-solving panned out. His great dreams were either strangled in infancy by staffers or halted by courts. And whether you believe that this happened because Donald Trump surrounded himself with incompetent yes men or steely adults in the room, both versions serve to offer proof of concept: Donald Trump accomplished close to nothing because the people around him were either too inept to put his vision into practice or too skillful at blocking him to allow him to put his vision into practice. Put another way, if you or anyone you know finds themselves reacting to the Biden Is Old revelations with the thought that, sure, Donald Trump is a 91-indictments-richer, adjudicated sexual abuser, defamer, liar, violator of national security, self-enriching, fascist-boosting insurrectionist, but it’s OK because he will surround himself with people who might check those impulses—well, doesn’t it rather intuitively make more sense to instead vote for the highly effective, internationally respected, but yes, sometimes forgetty guy who is surrounded by people with day planners?

A president is a lot closer to being a CEO than a superhero. And when it does come to being businesslike, Trump has declared bankruptcy six times – approximately six more times than Biden. Trump's business "skills" lean heavily towards fraud, deceit, and bullying.

The real reason we all keep falling for Great Man horse race stories is because they are good for fueling fantasies of all-powerful big daddy presidents who control every tiny aspect of governance in their tiny wee hands. If that is your jam, well, it would make sense to vote for the only candidate who believes in the same dream. If it’s not, the question is reducible to rather simple stakes: Do you want the Big Daddy who surrounds himself with sycophants and nutters and people with shared last names, or the one who surrounds himself with competence and expertise? This doesn’t seem, on balance, like a really tricky call. Do we prefer presidents who can backflip and ninja-kick their way to total world dominion? Perhaps. To my knowledge, nobody ever made a Tom Cruise movie about listening and learning and compromising. But if you still believe governance to be a sober and serious enterprise, vote like the alternative is chilling, because it is.

Trump flatters himself as a "stable genius". But it is Biden who brought stable governance back to the US. Being a constantly ranting gasbag is not an indicator of competence.

Very little attention is being paid to psychological age. Trump is just 42 months chronologically younger than Biden, but Trump acts like a toddler who is not yet 42 months old.

Parents with kids who were constantly having temper tantrums and being frequently disruptive would consider taking those kids to a child psychologist. Being a disruptive narcissist in his late 70s does not make Trump seem youthful but instead more like a case study for arrested development as a toddler.

The five Justices in the majority opinion, however, went farther than necessary to insulate insurrectionists from being disqualified from federal elections. They didn’t just rule that states cannot disqualify Trump, or Presidential candidates, but rather that states cannot disqualify any insurrectionist candidates for federal office. The Justices gave all the power to a notoriously dysfunctional Congress to do so, even though Section Five did not explicitly make Congress the sole enforcing authority of Section Three. As in the Dobbs case that overturned 50 years of Roe v. Wade, the conservative principle of “judicial restraint” does not exist with this Supreme Court. Republicans like to blast “activist judges,” but as we see yet again, an “activist judge” is just someone who rules against you. Under the Supreme Court’s expansive ruling, a state is currently unable to disqualify a candidate for federal office who engaged in insurrection, even if that person has been charged and convicted of insurrection. Even a federal court would be unable to bounce an insurrectionist from the ballot absent a law enacted by Congress.

There's No Restraining This Activist Supreme Court

This SCOTUS needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt with actual Justices, instead of these unelected activists who are opposed by nearly 8 in 10 Americans.

The Courts are not going to save us. The Courts aren’t even going to enforce existing laws that were written to protect us. The Courts are actively working against Democracy and doing everything The Courts can do to hasten Fascism’s hold on the levers of power. Fascism has already come to America. It is taking root in every state that is under Republican occupation, urged on and enabled by this SCOTUS majority, and their ideological partners in the House and Senate. The only way we can stop this from spreading like a Zerg creep over all of America is to overwhelmingly put Democrats into office and then force them to act.

If Congress won’t do something to limit the grotesque abuses of power by people who don’t interpret the law, but make law from the bench, it will be up to America to rise up and demand action. 

I refuse to be ruled by 6 Christofascist Nationalists, and I refuse to sit quietly while people who have the legal means to do something throw up their hands and furrow their brows.

This is going to be our last election that matters, if we don’t.

I’m serious. If Trump somehow gets into the White House again, we will never have another election in my lifetime.

LISTEN TO ME: any vote that is not for Joe Biden is a vote to end Democracy in America. Any vote that is not for a Democrat is a vote to end Democracy in America. When I see people insisting they won’t support Biden or Democrats because they aren’t Left enough, I want to pull my hair out. The stakes are too high for all of us -- especially the most vulnerable among us -- to indulge temper tantrums.

It’s a very simple choice: you can vote for Biden and Democrats, or you can vote to turn America into a Christian Nationalist Theocracy, ruled by autocrats.

This will be our last free election, if Republicans are not resoundingly and forcefully rejected at all levels.

The art of cleaning up after a stable genius

Today’s January 9th hearing testimony comes from Cassidy Hutchinson, aide to former chief-of-staff Mark Meadows, who revealed the level of tantrum throwing that went on when Trump was informed that no sir, we aren’t going to the Capitol Building while there’s a riot going on.

[S]he testified that she heard a secondhand account of how Trump was so enraged at his Secret Service detail for blocking him from going to the Capitol that he lunged to the front of his presidential limo and tried to turn the wheel.

Tony Ornato, then-White House deputy chief of staff, told Hutchinson that Robert Engel, who was the Secret Service agent in charge on Jan. 6, 2021, repeatedly told Trump on their way back to the White House after Trump’s Ellipse speech that it wasn’t safe to go to the Capitol.  

According to Hutchinson, Ornato recounted Trump screaming, “I’m the F’ing President. Take me up to the Capitol now.”

Trump then “reached up toward the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel,” Hutchinson remembered learning. She added that, according to Ornato, Trump used his other hand “lunge” at Engel.

And that isn’t all:

"Around the time that I understand the AP article [with an interview where Bill Barr affirmed there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud] went live, I remember hearing noise coming from down the hallway, so I poked my head out of the office, and I saw the valet walking towards our office. He had said, get [chief of staff Mark Meadows] down to the dining room. The President wants him. So, Mark went down to the dining room, came back to the office a few minutes later."

She continued: "After Mark had returned, I left the office and went down to the dining room and I noticed that the door was propped open and the valet was inside the dining room changing the table cloth off of the dining room table. He motioned for me to come in and then pointed towards the front of the room near the fireplace mantle and the TV where I first noticed there was ketchup dripping down the wall and there's a shattered porcelain plate on the floor."

(part of continuing coverage)

According to a former Trump adviser, "For the first time since the hearings started, no one is dismissing this."  But another Orange Nightmare ally adds, "This is basically a campaign commercial for Ron DeSantis 2024," and as a subscriber to the “Jeb would’ve gotten away with it” theory of Trump-administration bomb throwing, that fills me with waves of nausea.

What would another 4 years under Trump be like?

Imagine if you will, someone who has zero empathic qualities. A person vibrating with revenge. Someone who has spent their entire life self indulging on a brand, a purpose that is all they ever care about. A narcissistic sociopath; deeply entrenched in outbursts of anger, hatred and lustful ignorance. Living life on “my brand is higher turnover than any loan a bank can give you.” A gentleman’s agreement, but they are no gentleman. This person has spent their entire life; 70+ years on this planet, growing up in a standard of living he has only ever known. A man, whose father was a businessman and through his businesses, met a lot of wealth, a lot of influence and a lot of questionable behaviour. This person was surrounded by people he was introduced to in a world of social ignorance and old money wealth, because he had become his narcissistic father’s business protégé.

Throughout his entire academic and business career he has bought, bullied or faked his way out of everything, resplendent in the firm belief “dearest daddy” bred into him “everyone can be bought for a price”

Banks, businesses, criminals, judges…the list is endless in their world, because money speaks many languages, including Russian. His deep needed greed to be famous, to be talked about, to be adulated and praised - strokes his fragile ego. He demands attention like a toddler in the throes of a temper tantrum, because he’s always got what he wanted. Not an only child, but definitely a high maintenance one. Reminding me of a character from a well known book series, whose ridiculous parents spoilt their child endlessly while ignoring the child in their foster care. A child who demanded everything and got it no matter the cost - this is how this person has lived their entire life, bully into submission, threaten legal action if they never got it.

I watched in 2015 this person proclaim they were setting their sights on the presidency and I laughed with concerned hysteria. This idiot, who had spent his entire business career in and out of court due to bankruptcies. Casinos and hotels foreclose due to overdue loans, employees not being paid. Employees who had invested most if not all of their pension money in “shares” that would make them a sizeable profit to pay off their mortgages - to later find out it was just another scheme to help pay off or pay into his businesses, while they lost everything. His desire to hire undocumented migrants is old news he’s always done it. That’s why he holds favour with the old dusty republican men and women in congress, because they come from a long line of plantation owners and as you would know through American history, plantation owners had…you guessed it, slaves who they bought at auction to do the menial tasks for next to nothing. He is a man of very little talent but one who has bought and sold everyone and anything for his brand. He wants the celebrity status, he wants the adulation and ceremony of a King, he wants the authoritarian rule and suppression of a dictator, he wants the immunity of god but does not live with a Christian heart (not evangelical brainwashing)

Yes, this very same person wanted to be crowned a King, because he coveted that rule, but settled for Commander in chief instead. And, just like everything else in his life, he took measured steps to secure it through nefarious ways. His questionable admiration for authoritarian leaders puts his loyalty in the right paths of those who see America as their bankable gain. Years of political and foreign resentment balances out evenly when you meet with a weak minded, fragile ego who has always wanted to be praised. The art of the deal was never about the savvy businessman lie he always told but about the “fake it to you make it” mantra and he always excelled at that.

But here’s what lies ahead. He spent four years destroying America the last time. You can listen to the mentally concerned drum on about how he made their lives better, or how he made America great. Or how he made America the best it has ever been and think to yourself - do they actually go outside?

There was only one thing on Donald Trump’s mind from 2016 to 2020, how can I benefit from all of this? He used the office and seal of the president of the United States to enrich both himself and his blood sucking family of hangers on. He made his children (all adults) head of administration in the White House with no formal training in anything, including business (fake it to you make it) the nepotism he used in his questionable business practices, he simply transferred to the “People’s House” he installed a cabinet of lawmakers who lusted for fame, but felt left out. Grievance and vengeance because a black man had held that coveted office for 8 years and they needed (dusty and white privileged republicans) to drive that stench out. His plan was to stay there to show the world he wasn’t just Trump the businessman (6 bankruptcies, several business failures, university & charity disasters) but also the greatest world leader ever.

* stock market tanked

* economic downturn

* unemployment at an all time high

* infrastructure never fixed

* Medicare never looked at

* tax breaks for the filthy rich, tax increases for the working class

* migrants put into cages and separated from their children (white privileged free world)

* racism raised its ugly head and laughed, fascism, xenophobia, homophobia soon followed.

* gun related deaths increased, because why not? he abolished or allowed laws to lapse that had been put in place.

* scraped bills that he deemed unnecessary, pulled out of the Paris agreement, called America veterans suckers & losers, disgraced the military, threw paper towels at hurricane ravaged states claiming they weren’t part of America anyway.

Went on the world’s stage and mocked NATO demanding the countries pay more (America had only started paying more) or he was pulling out of NATO and Russia could occupy them all. Completely made himself an absolute laughing stock in front of other well respected leaders by throwing temper tantrums if he didn’t get his way.

Kissed the ass of Putin on more than one occasion. Ignored daily briefings, hired horrible actors to be his press secretary on multiple occasions. Went through more “chief of staff” positions than any former president.

And then came Covid and his botched handling of that. Nearly 5 thousand deaths, the worst of any country’s handling of the pandemic due to the size of the population of the United States. Mocked the scientists and doctors, refused states (who did not support him) of vital PPE instead, used another nepotistic family member to sell it off to states that didn’t use it because they questioned the vaccine and any easier way to keep their people alive.

His disastrous handling of the very serious pandemic led to so many unnecessary loss of life, ignorance into vital medicine that could help, instead advertising the use of injecting bleach into your veins. Once again Trump’s ignorance of not listening to sound advice, instead using his own because, he knows everything.

I won’t beat on about what happened during the previous election (we all witnessed it) the insurrection, the riots, the deaths and the damage when he very legally as witnessed by over 60 court cases all saying the same thing - lost the 2020 election, it was not stolen. Since then, he has done daily if not weekly rallies (he needs that hit of serotonin that can only be found through crowd adulation) he seeks to be re elected back into the White House. Not because he did such a fantastic job the last time, but because he could very well go to prison. 91 felonies, he’s already lost one tax fraud case and one sexual assault and rape case. He still has the hush money case, the RICO and espionage case to go through all while pleading he needs immunity, because without it, a president can be subjected to influence from foreign countries or leaders. Donald J. Trump already is, he just wants the freedom to do it all over again only this time, not get caught and answer for it, because immunity means he will be like Vladimir Putin and the leaders he greatly admires from Saudi Arabia - Turkey - Israel - China - North Korea - Russia -self appointed leaders with a regime that cripples the people of their country.

The point to this journalistic account on my tumblr is simply this;

After everything I have documented (not all in order) after all I have written, after everything that has been witnessed and grieved for. Even in the face of terrorism in your own country. The birth of a very dangerous ideology of Making America Great Again, christofacists plotting revenge on the country built on freedom and democracy, where in its constitutional legislations simply put the rule that divides church and state and successfully removed its colonial predecessors - the stripping of women’s rights and freedom of anatomy, the destruction of legal abortion (Roe vs Wade) and the push to go back in time to the 1800’s - will people still firmly believe this hate filled, vengeful, egotistical, delusional narcissistic sociopath is still worth electing him as the next president, knowing full well that once he gets in again he will do everything in his power to stay there. To then elect his predecessor (another Trump) to take over from him? He successfully taught his children well - grift, lie, squander, tax evade, hide business assets - they won’t let him down.

Or do you look at all that you went through, all that has taken 4 years to recover. To put right the horrors of the predecessor. To make the economy grow, to improve the medical system. To fix and improve the infrastructure, to raise employment and lower the cost of living. To help with student debt and get more money back in your pockets. To make America respected on the world’s stage and warn authoritarian leaders that this is not the way a countries people should be ruled. To stand up to murderous dictators and help a country fighting for its freedom from tyranny. To try and unify their country, not divide it. To have empathy and compassion, respect and loyalty to their people, not to themselves. To lift all voices including women’s to fight for what is most important up.

I hope this time you don’t send yourselves backwards, but move forwards to a better place. There is only one place Donald J Trump needs to go, one time he will ever be held accountable for his poor behaviour. One place he needs to be shown and to answer for all he has done for far too long…

Prison.

TPQ

People are apparently saying "well I'm not gonna vote/vote for trump if tik tok is banned!"

I'm pretty sure they were already going to do that, this is just their excuse of the week

But more importantly, if a stupid app matters more to you than the actual lives trump and the republicans will deliberately destroy, well that says more about them don't it?

But wait... I thought they weren't going to vote because of Gaza/because Biden hasn't personally forgiven THEIR student loan/because something something corporate centrism/because something something garble garble??! Does this mean their excuses just change by the week according to whatever's in the headlines and have no actual logical coherence or adherence to a guiding principle? Surely you jest, good internet sir and/or madam. Shocking.

Anyway, also... they realize that this effort is being spearheaded by Republicans and is pretty transparently an attempt to get another huge social media platform (after the Bird App Formerly Known as Twitter) into the ownership of an ex-Trump Cabinet official and an investor group with Russian ties? And that voting for Trump would directly play into those people's hands? And that... wait, never mind. I still expect logic or reason to have any place in this discussion, and it doesn't. Just tell me Why They Aren't Voting For Biden!!! next week and maybe I can get ahead of the curve for once.

This, however, is likewise why I oppose this rushed and Republican-driven move to "ban TikTok!!" in a highly consequential election year and think somebody needs to talk some sense into Biden and/or the Senate that this is a stupid idea and should be shelved (or at the least, heavily revised or modified). Yes, TikTok being owned by a group with Chinese government ties isn't great, but there's no morally pure ultra-megacorp that's going to rush in to fill the void. Forcing the Chinese owners to divest will just create an opening for Trump's ex-Treasury Secretary and his Russian businessmen buddies to step in instead, and I don't know about you, but I don't think that's a net positive in terms of keeping Americans' personal data out of the hands of hostile foreign entities. We already have Musk shilling for the alt-right and the Russian government every chance he gets, using Twitter to prop up their narratives and their operations, and selling TikTok to a Trump/Russian-linked consortium in fucking 2024 would be an incredibly massive own goal and give MAGA and company virtually hegemonic control over American social media content. That is why I think this is a stupid idea and should be opposed, but also, I agree that people who are using this as their Excuse of the Week to not vote were deeply, deeply unlikely to vote in the first place.

This is also a perfect example of why "well now I won't vote >:[!!!!" as a threat/temper tantrum backfires every single time. If there are young people who are concerned about TikTok possibly being banned, and their response is to immediately throw temper tantrums about not voting, all that does is reinforce to elected officials that young people never vote, there is no need to make legislation that champions their interests, and they don't need to fear any electoral backlash because these people have already spent years announcing their intention to Not Vote at every opportunity and clearly aren't about to start now. They remove themselves further from the civic process at every turn, and they reinforce the narrative that young people as a group are not worth having their concerns or ideas prioritized, because even when politicians do other things that young people like and/or support, young people are poised to turn against them and urge No Vote!!! :( at the drop of a fucking hat. So, yeah. "Don't vote!" is always a stupid and self-defeating message, but I can't see how it's possibly supposed to convince politicians that a group of people already predisposed not to vote is going to make any difference from what they already do. So yeah. Like. Not that this surprises me, but it's literally the same threat they've echoed at every single turn, doesn't represent anything new, and will probably be changed 10 times before the election anyway.

I feel a little bad for saying it but with the way i see americans on this site throwing childish temper tantrums about how nobody is perfect and pure so they wont vote at all is going to make it very hard for me to have any sympathy for them in the event that trump wins a second term and makes their country a straight up fascist dictatorship.

At that point its going to be very hard for me to see a huge group of users talking about it without just rolling my eyes and going "yeah, its almost like this could have been avoided huh. Now lie in the bed you made for yourself"

musings

Tenko saying ‘I chose to do this, I destroyed this house and my family out of my own volition’ is clearly a cope, evidenced by the following rationale ‘Otherwise, why would I even have these hands? Who would be able to explain why I was born this way?’

→ The neat easy solution is then, of course, to have it revealed that AFO gave Tenko Decay. He wasn’t supposed to have those hands. He wasn’t born this way. He didn’t actually want to destroy the house or the family (was just a kid feeling the emotions of a valid temper tantrum). 

→ Therefore, he is not evil, he does not hold malice, he is not meant to destroy. He had wrongly believed his purpose was to destroy things. Therefore he is not supposed to be a Villain trying to destroy Japan. And he should stop.

→ This fits with what AFO said about Shigaraki/Tenko ���To this day, you’ve never made a single decision on your own’.

For a Trump Card reveal though (assuming that 'AFO Gave Tenko Decay' is the trump card reveal) that’s supposed to give AFO more control over Shigaraki…

→ Tenko wasn’t supposed to be born this way… therefore he has no reason to listen to AFO, and every reason to fight back. Doesn't quite work.

→ If you take what Deku has done as Shigaraki finally receiving the blessing of ‘even if you were born with these hands, a Hero should still come and hold your hand’ (acceptance of himself, what he’s done, acceptance from Society Rep) then it's also a bit too late - he was rescued despite having these hands; but now that those hands aren’t actually his, he gets… Rescued+? Also doesn't quite work.

→ What it most likely has to be is: the shock and damning amount of tragedy of the reveal - beyond just being given Decay, but that AFO engineered his whole life - could render Shigaraki docile. For Shigaraki who tried so hard to assert himself and to lead with the creed ‘Do whatever we want’, it would undo all his efforts.

→ It's the fact that Deku has now symbolically rescued Shimura Tenko from the Shimura tragedy. That's more or less done. He's symbolically 1) stopped the massacre, 2) fixed the fact that no one reached out a hand, and 3) assured Tenko that even if he was born with destructive hands and feelings, a hero should still be there for him.

But even after all that, Shigaraki still insist on being a Hero for the Villains. Even after all that, Shigaraki believes he needs to keep being a Villain in order to give his friends what they want. He's intending to still rampage, in a way that's hard to counter because it's such a pure motivation... so it's the perfect time for the reveal that AFO was behind even this desire. Indirectly.

→ Previously, the symbolism of the Shimura House was that it was the accumulation point of social forces that had/will always reject Tenko and what he values (his outcast friends). That AFO might have built the house means those social forces don't actually exist, or don't exist in a capacity that would've given Shigaraki such hatred; it was AFO all along, and Shigaraki has been deluded about rejection. Essentially - Shigaraki's Jaku speech? Proven completely false. No relevance to reality.

And if he's deluded about this, then Shigaraki has no reason to feel rejected, to see himself as being rejected - he has no reason to want or have to be a Villain. Similarly, then, the grudges the League has with the world are also misguided. Shigaraki has no reason to want to continue being a Hero for the villains. Shigaraki must step down.

→ While this does stop the problem of Shigaraki's rampage, I feel like it also obliterates all remaining shreds of Shigaraki/Tenko's character. Even if his hatred fades, even if he's empty, he needs to be a Hero for the villains... So when you take away even that, what's left? He's emptier than empty, and thus will be easily dominated by AFO.

→ Perhaps it's time for Deku to rescue Shigaraki from AFO. However, not quite from AFO's construction of the reality - not when AFO revealed it himself and shattered it. No, it's time for Deku to rescue Shigaraki from his lack of agency...

…So it would be so funny if Deku has to sorta change course to convince Shigaraki that Decay is his power now and what matters is how he uses it and he should get angry and that he’s right for wanting to be a Hero for the villains and so he should help destroy AFO. Sorta the lessons from Todoroki + Eri + Gentle/Nagant combined.

Imagine how a judge would react if you or I behaved like Trump in a court of law. 🤬

Trump claims he's being singled out for prosecution. In fact, he's being hugely indulged so that he can't claim that he's being picked on.

Trump abused the court system for decades. Now karma has caught up with him and he's throwing temper tantrums in open court.

Trump is a petty bully who would be lucky to run a bodega in Queens if his daddy hadn't given him a ton of cash. Trump is a nepo baby in more than one way. The business fraud trial is showing the world what a phony Trump is as a self-described business genius.

What do you make of Trump's latest indictment?

I haven't read the whole thing, but it looks pretty solid, all things considered.

I'm more interested in the National Defense Act one, because I follow writers that talk about classified information (guys like John Sipher) and so I have a little bit better of an understanding of the background law in that topic.

This one though, has some serious potential if a guilty verdict is secured, because it focuses on actions rather than just his big temper tantrum about losing the election because he has the emotional depth of a five-year old knocking over the boardgame when he loses.

I doubt it'll convince the true believers though, who think that he's just getting railroaded because the political establishment can't handle 2016, and they'd rather stick their heads in the sand and whine.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

I've often been quite a fan of Star Trek's fandom wiki, "Memory Alpha". At first glance, its a very well-kept wiki, where people are quick to add new information, and the occasional attempt to spam the wiki with false or inflammatory information is quickly struck down.

However, when you take a closer look, its a rather nasty and pompous place.

For starters, character pages used to list a character's gender in the main info box at the top of pages. However, when Star Trek: Discovery introduced the franchise's first properly non-binary character, Adira, a few wiki contributors threw a temper-tantrum and now character pages do not list gender in the info box, and instead its mentioned in the main body of text if its considered "necessary".

Then there's the problem of the Wiki's framing device. Yes, a wiki, a site for which the main purpose is to be a resource of information decided it needed a framing device. The idea is that "MA is written from a POV from the distant future." Why is this a problem? Well, recently, a contributor opened a discussion article, (for those who don't know, this is a special page for the benefit of contributors to discuss potential changes to the way the wiki is run), talking about the way pictures on character pages are organised.

Currently, Memory Alpha will include two images on the top info-box of prominent recurring characters. The latest-chronological image at the top, and the earliest-chronological image at the bottom. The user on this discussion page posited that since the current "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is a prequel show that is taking time to flesh out characters who had very little screen time in the original series, that certain characters, such as George-Samuel Kirk or Robert April should have images swapped around so that the "primary" or most prominent depiction of the character is at the top. They used the examples specifically because, GS Kirk's only appearance in the originals was as a dead body, and Robert April's only appearance was a single episode of the Animated Series, and he's a different ethnicity, they claimed that "Adrien Holmes is meant to be the definitive portrayal of April".

This was met with nothing but backlash, the first quote I put in this post about "MA is written from a POV from the distant future" was used to justify why the later chronological appearances are listed at the top. But frankly, that doesn't hold water with Sam Kirk, because why would a future archive of historical information use a picture of someone's rotting corpse to depict who they were? And more importantly, this is where the whole thing of Memory Alpha having a framing device becomes a problem. Its all very quaint that the wiki has its lore, but at the end of the day, Memory Alpha isn't the SCP Foundation, its not archiving its own special set of original worldbuilding or anything, its a wiki for a bunch of TV shows and movies! Its primary purpose is to be a resource so fans can find out information. As the OP of the Discussion Page pointed out, anyone coming in to Star Trek through SNW who comes to look at Sam's MA page will see a dead body, kind of a spoiler if they're not already familiar with TOS.

Now yes, wiki pages will always have spoilers on them, that's kind of the point, but given his TOS appearance is just Shatner in a fake moustache, playing a corpse, there's really no need to classify that as the "most recent" iteration of the character.

Then of course, there's the Robert April thing. Of course someone chimed in to whine that changing April's ethnicity is "motivated by a dislike of character's original race. For fans who respect continuity, Adrien Holmes will never be the definitive Robert April. I've got nothing against him but I wish he played a new character." which is eye rolling. Someone did point out that live-action shouldn't trump animation. I can agree with that. There are certain circles who would tout that live action film or TV is inherently better than any other media, be it animation, comics, books, games etc, which it really shouldn't be held as, all forms of artistic expression should be held with the same respect, but, its nothing but red flags to whine that SNW hates white people because they cast a black actor as a formerly white character who only appeared in one episode animated on a budget of debt. And considering most of SNW's cast is white or white-passing, its hardly "a dislike of the original race". And guess how many people called out this user for whining about Adrien Holmes? None at all!!! Over the years, I've seen more Star Trek fans boasting that they never bothered watching TAS than I've seen say anything nice about TAS, so pretending to care that Commodore April is now a person of colour comes across incredibly disingenuous. (Not to mention the writer of the original Animated Series episode in which April has appeared has gone on record praising the casting of Holmes as live-action April, so really what does it matter if some 1970s micro-budget animation cells are contradicted)

Even with that aside, people were still arguing that the one-off animated appearance of April should still be at the top of his wiki page because "We're a future historical archive"

The point and TL;DR is a fan wiki should be a resource for real life fans in the real world first and foremost and have any framing devices second. Memory Alpha and the majority of its contributors don't seem to understand this. Maintaining some stupid illusion of being an in-universe archive seems to be more important to a lot of those people. And, between stuff like the gender tag mentioned at the top of the post, and the attitudes towards things like ethnic diversity, I don't really feel comfortable continuing to even use the wiki, much less contribute to it, as I have done on occasion. The admin at that wiki could really do to crack down on the gender-critical and racist-dogwhilstle-y users and have a serious think about whether they want to be running an actual wiki or an ARG disguised as a wiki, because the framing device BS is unnecessary as it is quaint.

Last night on The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell we witnessed a perfect description of The Insanity of Donald Trump.

PROJECTION - the Trumpian Way. He attacks, describes & unleashed awful things that "other people say & do" when in FACT Trump is actually revealing his many "flaws". I honestly believe that Trump has the intelligence of a 3 YEAR OLD CHILD. He is always WHINING & THROWING TEMPER TANTRUMS.

PLEASE WATCH & SHARE.

Someone clearly got ahold of Trump’s medical files and knows he won’t make it to the convention..

You won't like this one, but new ager alien kin people at least to go around throwing temper tantrums and shooting children because they are missgendered and don't force the society to call them High Priest of Atlantis or Pleidian self . They might be crazy and believe in nonsense theories, but at least they don't turn the society upside down and act like oppressed victims.

You Americas live way too good of a life without serious struggle and problems that now you have to act like opresc victims because someone doesn't call you zis ze zir or frog self .

So did you miss the memo that Jacob Chansley/Jacob Angeli/the """QAnon Shaman""" who was present at the January 6 US Capitol attack was a starseed? Did you miss where these people have a pretty big overlap with QAnon, the far right/American fascist movement?

Also, when it comes to the people who are shooting kids in the US, I promise you it's not the trans folks. We're not the people who think it's our God-given right to carry guns for days. You know who do? It's the kind of people who support Trump, that's who.

The gay-hating* senator from South Carolina threw a dramatic temper tantrum on the Senate floor the other day, during which he ranted and raved about a tweet from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Despite Graham’s theatrics, the Senate ended up passing the aid package yesterday.

Graham voted against it, at the behest of Donald Trump.

*self-hating