Today is Thursday, August 4, 2022. If you must know why I was quiet last night, it’s because we were hosting “Elizabeth” who asked us if she could stay with us until she had to leave for Kennedy Airport to get a 6 a.m. flight to Dominica, in the Caribbean. How could we refuse, even though she texted us later in the day? She came to us around 6:30 where we showed her the new kitchen and promptly left for dinner at a local restaurant called the White Radish.

After dinner, we walked home and prepared Elizabeth for bed on our living room couch. She was too tired to watch any television, so we said good night to her. She had to wake up at 2:30, so we left her around 9:30 or so.

What I did next was quite unusual for me: I read two books simultaneously until about 2:33 when I walked into the living room to check on Elizabeth. I read Mary Cantwell’s Manhattan, when I was young and William Faulkner’s Light in August, two very disparate books. I managed to avoid turning on the TV and it was a nice feeling, for a change. I let Elliot sleep to concentrate on my two books. The first one was a memoir of the author’s adventures living in the Village in the 50s after graduating from college, the other was a novel of the post-antebellum South by one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. I just never read much by him before, so I wanted to attempt to read one book by him before time runs out. I originally wanted to essay The Sound and the Fury, but I couldn’t find it in my library. Oh well, I might find it when I’m not really looking. By then, I might not desire to explore its pages. But I was awake to wish Elizabeth a safe and fantastic trip. I turned off the living room air conditioner and went back to reading; I finally turned off the lights at 3:24 a.m., one of my latest turn-ins.

Back to current news: Once a liar always a liar, as in the case of scumbag conspiracy theorist and all-around dickhead Alex Jones who was forced to fork over $4 million to the parents of a boy killed in the Sandy Hook massacre. The jury deliberated for less than a day before issuing its decision today in the trial for damages brought by Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of Jesse Lewis, 6, who was slaughtered in the mass shooting that claimed the lives of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. This breaking news is covered in an article in today’s online edition of The New York Times by Elizabeth Williamson who wrote that Mr. Jones’s lawyer, F. Andino Reynal, had the audacity to say that Jones and his company were prepared to pay a single dollar for each of the eight defamation claims. Well, it seems that this scumbag will be prepared to pay a little more than a $1 to the plaintiffs after today’s ruling.

If this ruling annihilates the career of a cheap profiteer in the form of stocky Alex Jones, so be it. This little troll has been “emblematic of how misinformation and false narratives have gained traction in society over the past decade.” According to the article, “he has played a role in spreading some of recent history’s most pernicious and dangerous conspiracy theories, such as Pizzagate – in which an Infowars video helped inspire a gunman to attack a pizzeria in Washington, D.C. – coronavirus myths [that most probably resulted in countless unnecessary deaths] and ‘Stop the Steal’ falsehoods about election fraud before the Capitol assault on January 6, 2021.

The trial will now enter a second phase where the jury will determine the amount of punitive damages that can be awarded to the tormented parents. The Sandy Hook families have said that money is not as important here as the verdict now being rendered on a destructive culture of misinformation and outright lies that result in ruined lives and reputations.

It is Jones’s alliance with the former dictator-to-be that propelled this piece of shit to the forefront of Republican Party populism when Dumpf appeared on Infowars in December 2015. Both peddlers of misinformation and conspiracy theories became fat peas in a pod as both pushed the racist “birther” lie that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, that Muslims in the New York area “celebrated” the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the 2020 election lies that resulted in violence at the Capitol last year.

During a surprising moment when he was being cross-examined, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Mark Bankston, disclosed to Jones and to the court that he had recently acquired evidence proving the Infowars mouth piece recently acquired evidence proving Jones had lied when he claimed during the discovery process that he had never texted about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. Not true!

What Jones had not expected was that his own bumbling attorneys had sent Bankston two years of cell phone records that included every text message Jones had sent. These records did show that Jones had in fact texted about the Sandy Hook shooting. Bankston slammed into the stocky defendant, saying, “That is how I know you lied to me when you said you didn’t have text messages about Sandy Hook.” This could be a potential perjury charge, in my estimation, in addition to the pending millions of dollars that Jones will be charged with forking over to the people he defamed for almost ten years.

The current trial is the first of three that will determine how much Jones will have to pay multiple Sandy Hook families who sued him and won default judgments. I say, “Bring it on,” and make a pauper and a nonentity of this once-powerful voice of bullshit that too many misguided people believed.

The January 6 committee is even interested in Jones’s texts that might shed more light on the Capitol riot that occurred then. Let’s hope a huge damage award expected tomorrow will force other conspiracy theorists to forever shut their damn mouths for fear of being sued and stripped of whatever funds they have.

I forgot to mention that Jones displayed his utter dismissal for the jury that was set to award $4 million to the first of two plaintiffs when video was played showing Jones uttering contempt for a “blue-collar” jury and his stupidity was also evident when Bankston played another video in which the idiot being judged by a jury of his peers attacked the judge, Maya Guerra Gamble, connecting her to pedophilia and human trafficking. Originally, when Jones was asked whether he connected the judge to those transgressions, Jones denied it, until the lawyer played video for the court of an Infowars video which did just that. So as I said, once a liar always a liar.

In a related story, Alex Jones’s ex-wife, Kelly Jones, told reporters that Jones must be having a “moment of comprehension” after he was found guilty of defamation after lying about the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre. She told Inside Edition that “I know that he’s hidden money.” She further added, “I think he’s got a lot of buckets under a lot of shelves.”

This related story appears in an online article of RawStory by Bob Brigham entitled ‘Cat’s out of the bag’: Alex Jones’ ex-wife says ‘a lot of people will be interested’ in her ‘insider info.'”

Kelly Jones discussed that her ex-husband’s lawyer’s inadvertent sending of his cell phone to the plaintiff’s attorneys could have significant implications for the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The lawyer, Mark Bankston, said he “intends to cooperate” with efforts to obtain the evidence by the Department of Justice and House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol. More bad news for an ex-president, wouldn’t you say?

The Infowars ex-wife said she also reached out to the House select committee, offering “relevant insider info.” More troubling news for a former insurrectionist, eh?

The ex-wife said, “I think we definitely saw him getting caught committing aggravated perjury.” She added, “I think the cat’s out of the bag, and a lot of people are gonna be interested in that information.”

If we need more proof that the repugnican party is now hurtling toward rank fascism, look no further than the current Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas, with the keynote speaker being Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. This far-right, unpopular leader in his own country called on conservatives to take back power from liberals, declaring a “clash of civilizations” is under way. What does this extremist leader mean by this? A civil war, perhaps? This revered pal of Dumpf faced his own backlash when he made blatantly racist comments in late July when he said Hungarians “do not want to become peoples of mixed race.” One former adviser, who has since resigned, referred to those remarks as “a pure Nazi speech worthy of Goebbels.”

This strongman leader has increasingly clamped down on political opposition and press freedom after he came to power in 2020. This alarming presence of such a divisive political leader at a conservative conference in this country received online coverage by CBS News in an article by John Woolley entitled “Hungarian Leader Orban declares at CPAC that “a Christian politician cannot be racist.”

During his inflammatory speech, the Christian right leader ingenuously claimed that “a Christian politician cannot be racist” and that those who consider him a racist or anti-Semite are “simply idiots.”

During his loathsome speech, Orban also attacked Jewish billionaire George Soros, former President Barack Obama, “globalists,” and the Democratic Party itself. He said of the party: “They hate me [for good reason, bonehead] and slander me and my country, as they hate you.”

So that’s it from me tonight.

Have a Good Friday. Let’s hope it won’t be as steamy as today, where Elliot and I took refuge in a movie house in Kew Gardens to view a charming film called Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, a throwback to the films of yore where there is no cursing, no nudity, and no CGI for distraction. The story concerns a widowed cleaning lady by the name of Ada Harris who falls in love with a couture Dior dress and somehow raises the funds to pursue her dream of going to Paris and to the House of Dior to buy her own creation. The film is a middle-aged 1950s fantasy, but is very heartwarming and delightful, aided by strong performances by Lesley Manville in the title role and France’s leading lady Isabelle Huppert as the stern director of the House of Dior who clashes with the ebullient Battersea cleaning lady. Guess who wins the war?

Stay safe and be well.