Photo of stack of newspapers by Daniel R. Blume, Wikimedia Commons
Jay Kuo, "There Is No Joy in Trumpville":
This has been a disastrous week—one for the record books, truly—in Trumpland. Three separate calamities went down this week, and we would be remiss to focus on just any one of them.
Robert Reich quoting Kyle Griffin:
THE TRUMP CORPORATION:
1 SCHEME TO DEFRAUD IN THE FIRST DEGREE - Guilty
2 CONSPIRACY IN THE FOURTH DEGREE - Guilty
3 CRIMINAL TAX FRAUD IN THE THIRD DEGREE - Guilty
4 CRIMINAL TAX FRAUD IN THE THIRD DEGREE - Guilty
5 CRIMINAL TAX FRAUD IN THE FOURTH DEGREE - Guilty
Lauren Gambino, "Trump Organization guilty of tax fraud, New York jury finds":
A jury in New York has convicted the Trump Organization of criminal tax fraud in a major blow for the former president.
Although Donald Trump was not personally on trial, prosecutors insisted he was fully aware of the 15-year scheme in which they said executives were enriched by off-the-books perks to make up for lower salaries, reducing the company’s tax liabilities."
Robert Reich, "The Georgia Senate runoff is a referendum on Trump’s zombie grasp on America":
The biggest loser in a Warnock victory won’t be his Republican rival, Herschel Walker.
It will be Donald Trump.
Walker’s entire candidacy was a Trump creation – not unlike Trump University, Trump Airline, Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks.
Tom Nichols, "Herschel Walker Is the New Normal":
Walker’s candidacy is a reminder of just how much we’ve acclimated ourselves to the presence of awful people in our public life. Although we can be heartened by the defeat of Christian nationalists and election deniers and other assorted weirdos, we should remember how, in a better time in our politics, these candidates would not have survived even a moment of public scrutiny or weathered their first scandal or stumble.
Mona Charen, "Why the Right Needs Hunter Biden," writes that the right needs the Hunter Biden story to assuage its guilt at excusing and promoting Trump, throwing away integrity by bucketloads as Trump keeps going even lower than anyone imagined possible. She states,
The right has a deep psychological need for the Hunter Biden story. They desperately want Joe Biden to be corrupt and for the whole family to be, in Stefanik’s words, 'a crime family' because they have provided succor and support to someone who has encouraged political violence since his early rallies in 2015, has stoked hatred of minorities through lies, has used his office for personal gain in the most flagrant fashion, has surrounded himself with criminals and con men, has committed human rights violations against would-be immigrants by separating children from their parents, has pardoned war criminals, has cost the lives of tens of thousands of COVID patients by discounting the virus and peddling quack cures, has revived racism in public discourse, and attempted a violent coup d’etat.
They know it. It gnaws at them. That’s why the Hunter Biden story is their heart’s desire.
Daily Kos, "Initial research confirms hate speech skyrocketing on Twitter ... and you ain't seen nothing yet," states,
As reported by Sheera Frengel and Kate Conger for The New York Times, research conducted by multiple organizations including the Anti-Defamation League and the Center for Countering Digital Hate confirms that since Musk took over the social media behemoth, hate speech on the Twitter platform has surged to unprecedented levels.
Frengel and Conger write,
Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter’s owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day.
Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Mr. Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day.
And antisemitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61 percent in the two weeks after Mr. Musk acquired the site.
What Trump’s historic, pro-Sedition outburst did ... was open up a can of worms at Twitter—revealing the dark story of how content moderation at Twitter has now collapsed in service of a far-right partisan agenda that Elon Musk (for his own, eldritch reasons) seeks to advance posthaste.
