Free Speech: After months of wrangling and litigation, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk late yesterday closed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter and immediately fired four top executives who were hustled out of the building. The world’s richest man, who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist,” says he will make Twitter a wide open unmoderated platform for all kinds of speech and debate, regardless of the content, and will even reverse the ban placed on former President Donald Trump.

  Twitter employs 7,500 people but has struggled in recent years to grow the business. Musk made an offer to buy it, then tried to back out, and the Twitter board sued to force him to buy.

Econ 101: The US economy grew slowly in the third quarter of the year — not a lot, but it was growing, not shrinking.

  Gross domestic product grew 0.6 percent after declining in the first two quarters. That’s a 2.6 annual rate. But with household and retail spending declining and the housing market cooling, this doesn’t mean the economy is averting a recession. A lot of analysts still think recession is coming.

  Even so, the Dow Jones finished up.

  On the downside, rates on a 30-year home mortgages hit 7 percent, their highest since 2002.

Potemkin Village: Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday in a foreign policy speech railed against “foreign elites” threatening his country even while he fights in Ukraine. 

  In a speech laden with leaden terms of political ideology, Putin said Russia feels kinship with the West of “traditional, mainly Christian values.” But, he said, “there’s another West — aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial, acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite.”

  He also denied that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.  

  Putin was claiming to be the victim of the West as he systematically destroys Ukraine. He says Russia is threatened by NATO, the European defense alliance formed to defend against …. Russia.

  This brings up Putin’s worship of the 18^th century Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin, who was, in part, Putin’s inspiration for annexing Crimea and invading Ukraine. Potemkin, who was Catherine the Great’s lover, attempted to create a “New Russia” that included what is now Ukraine and Crimea.

  Putin had Potemkin’s remains taken from a cathedral in occupied Ukraine and presumably repatriated to the motherland.

  Potemkin is credited, fairly or not, with inspiring the term “Potemkin Village,” which describes an ideal-looking settlement that is merely a façade with nothing behind it. Potemkin is believed to have created portable fake villages for Catherine to see and convince her that the peasants were faring well.

  Putin is doing something like that now, trying to convince Russians that the country is doing well in Ukraine, although this time the villages are all bombed out facades. 

The War Room:  With their soldiers getting pummeled by Ukraine, the Russian army has established backup lines manned by soldiers ordered to shoot anyone retreating from the front, according to audio of a phone conversation between a Russian soldier and his wife.

  Ukrainian intelligence released the audio that purports to reveal the soldier telling his wife about the situation: 

  “They brought the inmates here… from prison. But they led them somewhere way up front. And we’re sitting here as a retreat-blocking detachment, fuck. If someone runs back, we snuff them out.”

  “What a nightmare,” his wife says.

  “That’s how we have it set up. We sit on the second line, guarding the first. Behind us, there’s another line. If you go that way, you also won’t make it. So it’s impossible to run away. They shoot their own.”

Trump World: Lawyers for Donald Trump and federal prosecutors appeared yesterday in a closed hearing related at least in part to the Justice Department’s effort to be sure all documents marked classified have been returned by Trump to the federal government. CNN reported that it was the first appearance in a DC federal courthouse by the Trump legal team handling the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation.

  Also yesterday, a three-judge panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the IRS must turn over Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee. They’ve been trying to get the returns for years. Trump could still go to the Supreme Court to try to block the handover.

The Obit Page: Lucianne Goldberg, the politically conservative literary agent who convinced Pentagon employee Linda Tripp to record her conversations with White House aide Monica Lewinsky, leading to sex scandal and President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, has died at age 87.

  Goldberg also persuaded Tripp to get Lewinsky to preserve the dress with physical evidence of the affair. 

  As an agent, Goldberg represented a lot of celebrity tell-all books. Her son, Jonah Goldberg, is a conservative columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

The Spin Rack: Albuquerque Cosper Head, a January 6^th rioter who pleaded guilty to assaulting DC police officer, Michael Fanone, was sentenced yesterday to 7 ½ years in prison. It’s one of the most severe sentences handed down so far. The 43-year-old construction worker dragged  Fanone into the crowd by his neck shouting, “I got one!”  

Below the Fold: A man glued his head to the famous Johannes Vermeer  painting “Girl With a Pearl Earring” at a museum in The Hague in the latest attack on great works of art by climate protesters looking for attention.

  The attacks in recent weeks have included throwing mashed potatoes on Claude Monet’s “Haystacks,” and splashing tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers.” 

    In a short video of the “Pearl Earring” incident, one bald headed man glues his head to the painting, then a second glues his hand to the wall and pours what looks like condensed tomato soup over the first. One of the protesters asks, “How do you feel when you see something beautiful and priceless being apparently destroyed before your eyes?” He compared it to the planet being destroyed. “The future of our children is not protected.” 

  Neither is great art.

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