Round up of this week's news 11/19/2022
Hot takes on current events
AG Merrick Garland appoints a Special Prosecutor
On Friday, 11/18/2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed John L. Smith as Special Prosecutor to oversee the Mar-A-Lago documents and the January 6th insurrection cases.
The order to appoint Jack Smith as Special Prosecutor says,
The Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the ongoing investigation into whether any person or entity violated the law in connection with efforts 10 interfere with the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021, as well as any matters that arose or might arise directly from this investigation or that are within the scope of 28 C.F-R. § 600.4(a). This authorization does not apply to prosecutions that are currently pending in the District of Columbia, as well as future investigations and prosecutions of individuals for offenses they ‘committed while physically present on the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021. Those investigations and prosecutions remain under the authority of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.
When I first heard the news that Garland was thinking about appointing a Special Prosecutor my first reaction was, “Goddammit, he’s going to get away with it again!” I viewed the SC as a way for Garland to keep prolonging the investigations until it would be too late to indict. If Garland has the evidence, and I believe he does, why not just pull the trigger and indict Trump?
But now, after reading about Smith’s background and his specialty of indicting politicians I am back on the Garland train and looking forward to the ride. Greene, Boebert, Hawley, Cruz, Lee and Johnson and all the others that participated in the Big Steal and the run up to J6 should be shitting their pants.
And some are!
Here are just a couple of reactions to Garland’s SC announcement:
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., called the timing of the special counsel's appointment problematic given that Trump had just announced his third run for the White House.
Three "days ago, Trump announced and now [there is] a special counsel," said Cruz. "This is Trump derangement syndrome but this time with a gun and badge.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., similarly said that the DOJ appeared to be more "politicized and weaponized" than at any point in American history.
An Ironic Special Counsel for Trump
If this is Conservatism, Inc’s take on the SC announcement then I am all for it.
Warnock v. Walker
Raphael Warnock is headed for a run-off election for Georgia’s Senate seat on December 6, 2022 against Republican Herschel Walker. Neither candidate received over 50% of the vote during the November 8th mid-term election.
Georgia governor Brian Kemp will be campaigning for Walker. All the Republican big guns will be trying to get Walker over the finish line. The results of this election will not alter who controls the Senate. When the Nevada was called for Cortez-Masto the Democrats are guaranteed to have at least 50 seats and with Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote they will have the power of the majority.
That the GA seat will not be determinative of who controls the Senate it is nonetheless an important race because:
1) If Republicans lose that seat it strengthens the post mid-term narrative that Republican extremist candidates cannot win general elections thus maybe hastening the coming GOP/Trump split, and
2) If Democrats get an outright majority of 51 seats they will not have to share power with the Republicans. That will open up possibilities of Senate investigations picking up where House investigations left off because you know McCarthy, or whoever ends up Speaker of the House, will kill the J6 committee on day one.
I am predicting Warnock retains his seat with a bigger margin than he had in 2020 when he barely beat David Perdue in that year’s election to fill the remaining term of the seat. Democrats are motivated at the chance to blunt Manchin’s ability to single-handedly stop Biden’s agenda in the Senate. Republicans are demotivated due to the Red Wave not appearing and they have the added albatross of a declared Trump candidacy around their necks.
Elon Musk has no clothes
I think we can finally put to rest the myth that Elon Musk is some sort of business prodigy or technological genius. Look no further than the self-own that is Musk’s tenure at Twitter.
Over the course of the month, or so, of his Twitter takeover Musk has:
1) Lost around 75% of the Twitter workforce through direct firing, offering people severance and people just straight out leaving. It is so bad that they fired the guy that was in charge of building access and promptly locked themselves out of the building,
2) Musk has chased his biggest advertisers off of the platform and may even end up getting sued by companies like Eli Lilly who lost billions in market share after Musk started selling blue verification checkmarks to users and one of them used it to impersonate Eli Lilly and post that they would be giving insulin away for free which led to a giant drop in Eli Lilly’s share prices,
3) Musk has allowed thousands of previously banned accounts back onto the service and they repaid him by turning the racism/white nationalism/porn dial up to 11. And we all know that many companies like nothing more than their products to be associated with racism and porn.
4) It has come out that Musk has been lying all of these years about having a degree in physics and even when he received the one degree people can find, a bachelor’s in economics from Penn State.
Musk has built up a reputation as being an innovator and this generation’s Thomas Edison. What he has been shouting to the world these past few weeks is that he’s nothing but a charlatan that has no idea how to run a business if he doesn’t have top talent around him. He has no idea how real technology functions. But he does know how to network and how to convince other idiot tech-bros to just give him billions of dollars to just piss away.
I hope you enjoyed today’s recap. I might end up doing more of these. Please feel free to leave a like or a comment even if you disagree. My content is free and the subscriptions are free so please share this with others who you might think will like it. I promise to not be that guy that spams the crap out of your inbox.
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Good roundup.
Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read that a possible reason behind Garland's appointment of a Special Counsel is that some members of Congress could be indicted too, so there's even more reason to distance those decisions from the DoJ. What do you think of that idea?
I vacillate between optimism and extreme cynicism on the whole thing ... sometimes in the span of just a few minutes. Doesn't help to see good arguments supporting both perspectives from lawyers who know how this kind of sausage is made either.
I definitely enjoyed the round up. Thanks for it!