Losing My Perspicacity December 31, 2024

Good morning and happy last day of 2024. I hope everyone has had a great holiday season so far, and I wish you all the very best in 2025.

There’s still time this year to support independent journalism and help keep Losing My Perspicacity alive. For just $9.99 a month, you can get LMP in your inbox five days a week — and there will be some perks for premium subscribers coming early in the new year. If you were disappointed with the results of the November election (and I can’t imagine you’d be subscribing to this newsletter if you weren’t), January 20th and everything that follows is likely to be pretty miserable. We might as well muddle through it together and keep each other sane. I’m also one of the many journalists trying to cobble together multiple gigs to equal one full-time job, so your contributions are much appreciated.

Before we get to the news, I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me until now to watch the outstanding documentary The Janes (streaming on MAX). After the fall of Roe, I thought it would be difficult to see the fight for reproductive freedom through the lens of the 60s and 70s, knowing what was to come in June of 2022. Instead, this film had the opposite effect on me. Women have fought through this before, and we can damn well do it again. I finished it all fired up to take on the world and start causing trouble for the patriarchy. Here’s the trailer:

Anybody want to start an underground, fuck-up-the-patriarchy, clandestine organization with me? We meet on Tuesdays at Panera.

Today: E. Jean Carroll curb stomps Trump again (with bonus Nancy Mace idiocy); Has Elon Musk’s burner account been exposed?; Six Florida State players sue their coach; and The High Note.

Let’s do it.

E. Jean Carroll beats Trump in court again

Herr President-Elect has had a really rough week, and he’s still three weeks away from taking office. Not only has Elon Musk moved into a cottage just a few hundred feet from Donald Trump’s dining room table at Mar-A-Lago, but Trump has also had to side with immigrants this week (you know that killed him), and he’s been forced to throw his support behind Mike Johnson for House Speaker, a guy his base absolutely hates.

Now, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has denied Trump’s appeal of the jury’s verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault lawsuit and upheld the $5 million verdict.

Ah yes, that overwhelming voter mandate of (checks notes) … 1.5 percent of the popular vote.

I have no doubt that Trump’s plan is to appeal this case all the way to his pals at the Supreme Court, but given how much flak SCOTUS has rightfully taken lately for being a cog in the machine of the oligarchy, they would have a hard time justifying hearing this one. Trial judges are given wide latitude on appeal, and, as they were the ones sitting in the courtroom hearing the evidence, appellate courts generally put great stock in their discretion. Moreover, the broad presidential immunity ruling handed down by the Court last summer only applies to action taken by the President for “official acts” of his presidency. Assaulting a woman in the dressing room of Barney’s in the 1990s (and then defaming her decades later) doesn’t come anywhere near satisfying that requirement.

The Judge in both the original sexual assault lawsuit and the ensuing defamation suit brought by Carroll, Lewis Kaplan, has been on the bench since 1994 and isn’t exactly a bleeding-heart liberal. He’s been given awards for excellence in federal jurisprudence by both the NY State Bar Association and Federal Bar Council while also being on the receiving end of a judicial complaint by the notoriously left-wing National Lawyers Guild, who accused him of showing favor to Chevron Oil in a significant environmental case. I suppose anything is possible these days, but I’d be very surprised to see SCOTUS get involved with this one.

Trump, of course, is also appealing a separate defamation case brought by Carroll, the one in which she was awarded $83 million in damages. A ruling from the appellate court in that case has not yet been handed down.

Of course, Nancy Mace had to weigh in, and I’m not sure she understands that Trump lost the appeal and E Jean Carroll won.

Elon Musk is just the worst

If you haven’t been paying attention to the news (and who could blame you?), you might not know that 1) Much of MAGA on X has turned on Elon Musk due to his support for HIB Visas; and 2) Musk has now written an op-ed supporting Germany’s far-right AfD party, who was even too far to the right for France’s Marjorie Taylor Green, Marine Le Pen).

YEAH! You’re all too stupid to possibly comprehend! (Actually, the reason you’re in America, Elon, is because you lied on your immigration application, but let’s move on for today’s purposes.)

Several media outlets (the Pakistan-based Express Tribune, Splinter, and The New Republic among them) are speculating that Musk’s X burner account has been outed as a frequent Musk-defender named Adrian Dittman.

The evidence? Well…

Okay, that actually sounds a lot like Elon Musk. According to sleuths on X, Dittman frequently defends Musk in X Spaces (that alone makes me think it’s Musk — because who the hell uses Spaces??), and has slipped into the first person when talking about Musk more than once.

Right at the very end, the alleged Adrian Dittman says something about the “rocket fuel that I’m using right now.”

I went over to Dittman’s X account and read through his timeline, and he certainly seems to have all the same complaints as Musk on the same days as Musk. He also does a lot of “if only stupid people understood how smart I am” vague posting, which also feels a lot like Musk. I mean…

Pure Musk.

Then I came across this. The saddest, most pathetic burner post ever.

GAH.

Musk, predictably, is trying to tweet through the whole thing.

Six former FSU men’s basketball players sue their coach

Six former Florida State men’s basketball players have filed a lawsuit against FSU coach Leonard Hamilton, claiming they never received the $250,000 in NIL money he promised they each would receive.

This isn’t the first suit over NIL money, and it won’t be the last. More than a few coaches have been accused of assuring players big NIL paydays, only for kids to transfer schools and never see the promised cash. Florida football coach Billy Napier is among them — he’s being sued by Jaden Rashada (who transferred to Georgia) over an unpaid $13 million in NIL money. Players at both UNLV and Tulsa have also claimed that they were promised NIL money they never saw.

Just had to share

I apologize for not having a gift link to share, but I came across this post while I was looking into the Musk/Dittman thing, and it was too banger not to share. (I continue to try to limit sharing posts from X as much as possible.)

I have plenty of issues with Meidas Touch and with The Daily Beast, but I give credit where credit is due: Put whoever wrote that post in charge of messaging for the Democrats.

The High Note

Each day, I do my best to send you out into the world with a smile on your face. Today, for your consideration, I give you the brilliant Margo Martindale talking about characters actors (including Wayne Knight!) who moonlighted as private detectives.

cbcq

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And, of course, in case you missed it, this year has been as rough on Buddy as on the rest of us. (That’s Will Ferrell at the Kings’ game. He sat on the glass like that the whole night.)

I wish you all a very Happy New Year, and I hope you do nothing but survive and advance in 2025.

See you all on Monday.