You’re welcome, Morgan. In grade school…I’d get overwhelmed by things presented to me in big chunks.
Without knowing what I was doing, I would tear them down into little “bricks” and then re-assemble the “building” a few bricks…then stop….step back…assess…and then start again.
I’ve found even brilliant people…who CAN gobble it all up in big pieces…are surprised at how much better they grasp things…presented in this manner.
When I was young spelling was really easy. English was easy.. math not so much.. algebra and geometry 😵💫 nope.. but words are easy.. to get thru math I had to break everything down to the simplest form to get it..
Ken Paxton just keeps popping back up like a bad penny…. just about the time you think he’s finished, he somehow gets resurrected. I really wish EM would self-deport to Mars and take the trillions with him…..
This whole landscape is getting pretty intense. I read a substack article earlier today from George Polisner who was an Oracle sr exec back in the day. He resigned when another Oracle person became part of T’s transition team. In his article he laid out how the billionaire influence and $$ have infiltrated our system. It’s both depressing and enraging and yes, he talks about Musk, his Nazi grandfather and mother (who passed the influence to E from her indoctrination) and other historical events. It’s a long read and quite informative.
I mention this because articles like George’s and the ones here from Jack are really painting an absolutely unmistakable picture as well as pointing out the source of so much pain, anger and frustration with the current system.
Deb...the bad penny thing...YES...and this piece is my attempt at why: he keeps getting resurrected...because somebody keeps PAYING FOR the resurrection. His own party's donors already tried to let him go quietly. They did.
I'll look up Polisner...I would LOVE to read that.
File the date: November 20, 2023, the same day advertisers began walking from a platform awash in extremist content, is the day the machinery of a state government turned against the organization that reported it, not against the platform itself. Note which direction the power moved — not from citizen to official through the ordinary channel of complaint and investigation, but from a billionaire’s grievance directly into a prosecutor’s inbox, with a court later calling the retaliation “uncontested.” Jack is correct that the dollar figure in Texas is not the story; $248,000 is a rounding error to a man who has since authorized more than $100 million for a single election cycle, and who spent roughly $20 million to install different judges just one state over. Note which pattern repeats: in Wisconsin in 2025, that same money did not merely fund advertisements arguing for a judicial candidate — it went directly into the hands of voters, in the form of million-dollar checks, dressed up after the fact as payment for “spokesmanship” on a petition once state officials began asking questions. A special prosecutor later declined to bring charges, reasoning that no jury would convict a man that famous for an act that transparent. File that date too. The legal system did not say the payments were proper. It said they were unpunishable.
File the date of the impeachment vote itself: May 2023, and note who cast it — not the opposition party looking for a scalp, but a Republican-controlled Texas House voting overwhelmingly to remove a Republican attorney general. Note who brought the case against him in the first place: eight of his own senior deputies, men who worked inside his office and chose the FBI over their careers. This is not the profile of a politician undone by his enemies. It is the profile of a politician his own colleagues found unbearable to work for, tried to remove, and failed to remove only because the Senate that acquitted him answered to different pressures than the House that impeached him. File that distinction carefully — acquittal is not vindication, it is simply the point at which the machinery of accountability stalled.
Note the number that follows from this history into the present: $119,000. Not the sum Paxton raised, but the sum his own campaign has spent on advertising in a Senate race, in the second-largest state in the country, against an opponent who has spent more than $25 million. A party does not starve a candidate it believes in. Note which conclusion the state’s own Republican donor class has already reached about this man, quietly, with their checkbooks, in a way no press release ever will: they will not fund him. What follows is not persuasion but override — a single fortune stepping in to substitute for a verdict the party’s own members already delivered.
This is the throughline worth naming in the register of political history rather than campaign-finance trivia: a fortune deployed not to persuade an electorate but to overrule the verdicts institutions have already reached — a party’s own donors on one man, a state’s own courts on another — and to do so with such scale and repetition that the overruling itself becomes unremarkable. Authoritarian consolidation rarely announces itself as an event. It arrives as a series of unpunished trials: a check handed to a voter in Green Bay, a subpoena aimed at a media watchdog in Austin, a prosecutor who declines to prosecute, a party that keeps its wallet closed and gets outvoted anyway. Note which decade taught one man that he could purchase not influence but outcomes, in state after state, court after court, without consequence attaching to any single instance. Jack is correct: the qualification for higher office, in this arrangement, is not the scandal. It’s demonstrated willingness to point the machinery of government at whoever writes the unflattering story — and unpopularity within one’s own coalition ceases to function as a check the moment one man’s money is large enough to make it irrelevant.
It’s like a puzzle but you’re breaking each piece down so we can see each piece as they are then the whole.. brilliant work thank you my friend.
You’re welcome, Morgan. In grade school…I’d get overwhelmed by things presented to me in big chunks.
Without knowing what I was doing, I would tear them down into little “bricks” and then re-assemble the “building” a few bricks…then stop….step back…assess…and then start again.
I’ve found even brilliant people…who CAN gobble it all up in big pieces…are surprised at how much better they grasp things…presented in this manner.
I’m glad you find it helpful!
-Jack
When I was young spelling was really easy. English was easy.. math not so much.. algebra and geometry 😵💫 nope.. but words are easy.. to get thru math I had to break everything down to the simplest form to get it..
Though musk spent $25 million in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April of 2025...
AND STILL LOST!
Yes…he DID Sky Blue. I look forward to Texas cramming this one down his “throat” as well.
-Jack
Ken Paxton just keeps popping back up like a bad penny…. just about the time you think he’s finished, he somehow gets resurrected. I really wish EM would self-deport to Mars and take the trillions with him…..
This whole landscape is getting pretty intense. I read a substack article earlier today from George Polisner who was an Oracle sr exec back in the day. He resigned when another Oracle person became part of T’s transition team. In his article he laid out how the billionaire influence and $$ have infiltrated our system. It’s both depressing and enraging and yes, he talks about Musk, his Nazi grandfather and mother (who passed the influence to E from her indoctrination) and other historical events. It’s a long read and quite informative.
I mention this because articles like George’s and the ones here from Jack are really painting an absolutely unmistakable picture as well as pointing out the source of so much pain, anger and frustration with the current system.
We have our work cut out for us….
Thank you, Jack.
Deb...the bad penny thing...YES...and this piece is my attempt at why: he keeps getting resurrected...because somebody keeps PAYING FOR the resurrection. His own party's donors already tried to let him go quietly. They did.
I'll look up Polisner...I would LOVE to read that.
Thank you for reading this closely!
#HoldFast
-Jack
File the date: November 20, 2023, the same day advertisers began walking from a platform awash in extremist content, is the day the machinery of a state government turned against the organization that reported it, not against the platform itself. Note which direction the power moved — not from citizen to official through the ordinary channel of complaint and investigation, but from a billionaire’s grievance directly into a prosecutor’s inbox, with a court later calling the retaliation “uncontested.” Jack is correct that the dollar figure in Texas is not the story; $248,000 is a rounding error to a man who has since authorized more than $100 million for a single election cycle, and who spent roughly $20 million to install different judges just one state over. Note which pattern repeats: in Wisconsin in 2025, that same money did not merely fund advertisements arguing for a judicial candidate — it went directly into the hands of voters, in the form of million-dollar checks, dressed up after the fact as payment for “spokesmanship” on a petition once state officials began asking questions. A special prosecutor later declined to bring charges, reasoning that no jury would convict a man that famous for an act that transparent. File that date too. The legal system did not say the payments were proper. It said they were unpunishable.
File the date of the impeachment vote itself: May 2023, and note who cast it — not the opposition party looking for a scalp, but a Republican-controlled Texas House voting overwhelmingly to remove a Republican attorney general. Note who brought the case against him in the first place: eight of his own senior deputies, men who worked inside his office and chose the FBI over their careers. This is not the profile of a politician undone by his enemies. It is the profile of a politician his own colleagues found unbearable to work for, tried to remove, and failed to remove only because the Senate that acquitted him answered to different pressures than the House that impeached him. File that distinction carefully — acquittal is not vindication, it is simply the point at which the machinery of accountability stalled.
Note the number that follows from this history into the present: $119,000. Not the sum Paxton raised, but the sum his own campaign has spent on advertising in a Senate race, in the second-largest state in the country, against an opponent who has spent more than $25 million. A party does not starve a candidate it believes in. Note which conclusion the state’s own Republican donor class has already reached about this man, quietly, with their checkbooks, in a way no press release ever will: they will not fund him. What follows is not persuasion but override — a single fortune stepping in to substitute for a verdict the party’s own members already delivered.
This is the throughline worth naming in the register of political history rather than campaign-finance trivia: a fortune deployed not to persuade an electorate but to overrule the verdicts institutions have already reached — a party’s own donors on one man, a state’s own courts on another — and to do so with such scale and repetition that the overruling itself becomes unremarkable. Authoritarian consolidation rarely announces itself as an event. It arrives as a series of unpunished trials: a check handed to a voter in Green Bay, a subpoena aimed at a media watchdog in Austin, a prosecutor who declines to prosecute, a party that keeps its wallet closed and gets outvoted anyway. Note which decade taught one man that he could purchase not influence but outcomes, in state after state, court after court, without consequence attaching to any single instance. Jack is correct: the qualification for higher office, in this arrangement, is not the scandal. It’s demonstrated willingness to point the machinery of government at whoever writes the unflattering story — and unpopularity within one’s own coalition ceases to function as a check the moment one man’s money is large enough to make it irrelevant.
#HOLDFAST