Oh, dear. Here we are on the very the last day of March, and I'm just under the wire again. For the nearly eleven years of this blog's life -- since July 2006 -- I've blogged at least once every calendar month, and often much more than that. I've been preoccupied once again with real work and real life and falling in love with my husband all over again and other engaging things, not to mention that I've been busy railing on social media, and that takes a lot of energy. But now it's high time to return to the Whirled. And though this is still not a political blog, except when it needs to be, I'm feeling like it needs to be again today. I know some of you don't like that, so you'll just have to turn the other way for a while.
Despite the roiling Trussia scandal and all of his other worries, our esteemed SCROTUS Herr Drumpf is still engaging in his petty wars with the critical media, and shaking his tiny little fist at the First Amendment. I first wrote about his threats against the First Amendment over a year ago, shortly after he had bloviated about "opening up libel laws" to make it easier for him to sue journalists and media outlets that hurt his feelings.
Now here we go again, as Herr Twitler takes to his favorite forum on 30 March, 2017, to make noise about "libel laws" once again. Tweeted he:
The failingI'm sure the New York Times is quaking in its boots over that threat. Fortunately he's getting a lot of #Resistance to his dumb tweet. Follow the link to the tweet, and enjoy the responses. Detractors spared no effort with their snark, cartoons, and general smackdowns.@nytimes has disgraced the media world. Gotten me wrong for two solid years. Change libel laws?
Of course I haven't forgotten the Drumpf/Scamworld connection, which makes SCROTUS more relevant to my regular beat. Not that it's even such a reach any more: unfortunately Scamworld and politix have merged in unpleasant new ways that are shaking the foundation of America.
At any rate, in a post this past January, Salty Droid mentioned billionaire investor/corporate raider Carl Icahn:
Carl Icahn :: President Trump’s new special advisor on regulatory reform … owns the biggest chunk of cult-Herbalife.That Herbalife/Icahn connection is eminently worthy of further exploration (though already explored at length by Salty Droid), and I suspect that our little fake robot has been engaged in such exploration for the past couple of months, which may help 'splain why his blog has been mostly quiet since that January post.
But other media are on now Icahn's case too, including the "failing" New York Times. This is from 26 March, 2017:
[[Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Icahn] to help the nation “break free of excessive regulation.” But there is an additional detail that is raising eyebrows in Washington: Mr. Icahn is a majority investor in CVR Energy, an oil refiner based in Sugar Land, Tex., that would have saved $205.9 million last year had the regulatory fix he is pushing been in place...The larger problem is that the Drumpf wrecking crew seems hell-bent on waging an all-out war on science, and in addition to decimating safety regulations, they are apparently attempting to erase all mention of "climate change" and related matters from official communications issued by any of the government agencies that are involved with environmental issues. In the new "political correctness" under Donald J. Trump, the term "climate change" has become very, very politically incorrect indeed.
...The blitz has already generated at least one clear outcome: Since Mr. Trump was elected president with Mr. Icahn’s very vocal support and nearly $200,000 in political contributions to Republican causes — the stock price of CVR Energy has soared. By late December, it had doubled. It is still up 50 percent from the pre-election level, generating a windfall, at least on paper, of $455 million as of Friday.
The merging of private business interest with government affairs — aspects of which have previously been reported by Bloomberg, but which The New York Times has found further evidence of — has generated protests from ethics experts in Washington, as well as certain Senate Democrats. They consider Mr. Icahn’s dual roles perhaps the most troubling conflict of interest to emerge so far in the new administration.
And that's every bit as scary as the Scammer in Chief's war on the First Amendment... and possibly even scarier than the Drumpf/GOP parliament of whores' war on Internet privacy... but maybe the privacy thing is a whole 'nother blog post. Or maybe I'll get back to simpler fare, such as imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau and his continuing whiny campaign to have Herr Drumpf set him free.
Anyway, tomorrow's another month, and let's make it as good a month as we can. Under the circumstances, you know.