New bit 'n chunk: DJT’s money troubles; An important USSC decision

Everyone is reporting that DJT is telling the world that he cannot raise the money he needs to meet a court-imposed $464 million bond obligation by a deadline next week. For example, ABC News reports: Trump faces ‘insurmountable difficulties’ in securing $464M bond in civil fraud case, his attorneys say -- Judge Arthur Engoron had ordered Trump to pay $355 million plus interest. Unfortunately, this is not a basis to feel some comfort or that he will finally face some significant justice. DJT knows how to subvert justice to protect himself. 

DJT has already indirectly told the world that if the courts do not back off, he will accept bribes in the normal course of business, including in governing if he gets back in power. He expressed his ‘open for corruption’ threat in terms of being vulnerable to courts forces him to be open to corruption to pay fines and allegedly corrupt performance as president to try to avoid court-ordered fines. Although DJT took bribes before when he was in office before, the bribery is going to be more worse from here on out. 

Another signal that DJT is going to accept bribes is his signaling that he is considering giving convicted felon and traitor Paul Manafort a major role in his re-election campaign. The traitor-felon Manafort is connected to Russian oligarchs who are connected to Putin, who his DJT’s role model and likely controller. CNN reports: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is in discussions to help with reelection effort -- Former President Donald Trump’s team is in discussions with Paul Manafort, his 2016 campaign chairman whom he later pardoned, to potentially help with the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, three sources familiar with the ongoing conversations told CNN.

The frightening truth is that DJT’s money trouble is our trouble too. But for better or worse, it is far better for us that he has this money trouble, than letting him off the hook for his crimes and treason. Either way, he will be corrupt. 

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Slate reports about an important decision about the limits of government power:

Even the Supreme Court’s Conservatives Are Fed Up 

With the Garbage Coming Out of the 5th Circuit

Murthy v. Missouri poses a question so asinine that to ask it is to answer it: Can government officials encourage social media companies to moderate certain content that they deem harmful—most importantly, disinformation about COVID-19 in the middle of the pandemic?

Yes, of course they can: The First Amendment does not gag public officials from urging Facebook or the Washington Post or anyone else to publish or not publish certain information, especially when it contains dangerous lies about a once-in-a-century pandemic that could exacerbate the crisis. The First Amendment bars government censorship, not government persuasion, and the Biden administration planted itself on the latter side of that bright line. At least six justices grasped this basic constitutional principle on Monday.  

Like so many Supreme Court cases these days, Murthy is built atop a heap of fake facts. 

The opinion he handed down on July 4, 2023, was a humiliating mess of contradictions, fabrications, and (ironically) misinformation. Doughty adopted the plaintiffs’ theory that the administration “coerced” social media companies into removing “conservative” speech about COVID, ....  

Doughty, it turns out, grievously butchered the record to reach his conclusion. An exhaustive analysis by Mike Masnick proves that Doughty consistently misrepresented testimony and other evidence in the record to construct a conspiracy theory with zero basis in reality. He distorted emails and other exchanges to make them look coercive when they were nothing of the sort, cherry-picking and rearranging quotations to put them in a censorious light. Yet the hard-right U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, where law goes to die, affirmed Doughty’s conclusions and upheld much of his injunction (while narrowing it in part). That move sent the administration racing to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay, which it granted in October, over the dissents of Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas.

The decision is encouraging because three of the six authoritarians understood how damaging this would be if the 5th Circuit decision was upheld. As Slate says, the case was asinine right from the get go and the anti-government arguments should never have made it past the trial court.

This is deeply troubling because both the 5th Circuit appeals court and three of the six USSC judges (i) made clear their hate of government, (ii) displayed an authoritarian trait of disregarding or rejecting inconvenient facts, and (iii) displayed an authoritarian trait of fabricating facts and applying partisan biased reasoning to inconvenient facts. 

That said, it does not mean the other three TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) judges are not authoritarian. They are. But this case was so obviously wrong that they believed they had to side with the government on this. There are other, much more subtle ways to kill democratic government than this deranged 5th Circuit cannon blast. Apparently Roberts convinced Kavanaugh and Barrett of that. 

Also troubling is Slate calling the TTKP judges “conservative.” That is a major mistake. By now it is clear that all six are some form of still-evolving kleptocratic authoritarian monster, i.e., some combination of autocratic, plutocratic and fundamentalist Christian theocratic.