There's other IMPORTANT POLITICAL STUFF happening, yanno

Lesley Stahl of 60 minutes caught a lot of flack for interviewing conspiracy kook MT Greene. I decided not to get too hard on an 82 year old woman who lost her husband last summer. Others were not as reticent.

Empty Greene deserved more criticism for her behavior and past actions including screwy conspiracies, her harassment of traumatized Parkland School students, her election denials, her use of PPP funds, and her claims that Biden and Democrats are commies and pedophiles. 60 Minutes made her out to be more normal than she is or is capable of being. This director’s cut is better, but I’m not sure if the link works without a signup (please let me know).

https://spoutible.com/thread/4131660

She was not well-received in NYC during Trump’s arrest yesterday, forced to depart early by a cascade of whistles and afterward in an interview conducted by her boyfriend, she compared the arrest to other good people who’ve been arrested, like Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ. Not kidding; that’s how far out of the ‘normal’ spectrum of reality she is.
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The Trump case says he had fraudulent financial transactions done to buy the silence of three people: Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000 by Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen to stay quiet about a one night stand, Karen McDougal was his mistress for nearly a year (correction: for a month) and she was paid $150,000 by AMI, (the publisher of the National Enquirer and friend of Trump), and the doorman, paid $30,000 by AMI to be quiet about another Trump kid born out of wedlock (it isn’t clear whether the kid exists, but would you pay out 30 grand if you had doubts?)

This guy was so desperate to win in 2016 that he spent half a billion (post-publish correction: half a million) dollars trying to keep 160 million voters in the dark about his businesses, taxes, charities, ties to Russian oligarchs now helping fund the War On Ukraine, his money laundering, his treatment of employees, staff, contractors and customers. And the ethics of the guy when he had a pregnant wife.

But he’s not being prosecuted for ethics. He broke financial laws. All the guys in his hire that were involved in the coverup have been prosecuted so it’s standard practice to go after the kingpin too.

There’s a clear paper trail that shows the convoluted way payments and reimbursements occurred, with two shell corporations set up. That’s the main thrust of these indictments; each payment broke one or two laws (NY financial laws and/or campaign finance laws.)

There’ll be much debate over what the odds of conviction are. He and others have violated campaign finance laws previously with only a wrist slap so I’m skeptical about those. But moving around $420,000 illegally could land him some jail time. I’m still convinced the bigger crimes ahead will take him away from his dangerous stage with its violent right.

I’ll mostly try to direct this newsletter away from his ongoing crime wave b/c you can find lots of fact, theory, staged outrage, guesswork and wasted camera footage in every news source you know. I mean, why did they follow his stupid mini-motorcade after he left the place he was arrested in ? C’mon editors, stop acting like gradeschoolers gawking at a cartoon superhero! If you can’t find more newsworthy stuff to fill our screens with, you’re in the wrong line of work.

NPR decided to skip the clown show: kudos to them for being the grownups bored by the third rate clown.

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Here’s other important news, from our country’s third largest city:

This race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat has the attention of most political analysts because swing state Wisconsin's gerrymandering legislature is off the rails. Janet Protasiewicz is viewed as the most evenhanded candidate capable of making the best assessments there.

Before I finished writing, she was declared the winner by a big margin, about 57% to 43%. The guy she defeated conceded like this:

Dan Kelly: "It brings me no joy to say this: I wish that in a circumstance like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent. But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede."

Which tells you all you need to know about his judicial temperament.

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Saudi Arabia led another round of oil production cuts and I’m saying the obvious here. Its brutal misogynist leader wants Trump in office, not Biden. This is designed to put a damper on the US economy to keep inflation high.

The stockmarket was at a critical point of rise and a reversal here could make it slide for another year. But unless Saudi Prince Bonesaw pulls another stunt like this a year from now, he can’t sustain it through election day. Biden will outperform the estimates the oddsmakers are giving him now. If he wants to be re-elected he mainly has to avoid health problems for 19 months.

But we will have extra costs in the meantime, hurting working families.

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I’ll leave the final words to Stormy Daniels.

Daniels said the indictment will “divide people” and questioned whether Trump would ultimately be held accountable, noting that he has “already gotten away with inciting a riot.”

“Whatever the outcome is, it’s going to cause violence, and there’s going to be injuries and death,” Daniels warned. “There’s the potential for a lot of good to come from this. But either way, a lot of bad is going to come from it, too.”

However, Daniels says she’s undaunted by the prospect of facing Trump in court.

“I’ve seen him naked,” she explained. “There’s no way he could be scarier with his clothes on.”

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Roy Wood Jr uses The Force.

And Randy can’t catch his breath at this historic level of exuberance.

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