__________
“This is a stage that all dictatorships reach; when they do the dictator can no longer afford mistakes and always makes them.”
Bernard DeVoto
__________
MY APOLOGIES. As a dedicated blogger, determined to record the story of Donald J. Trump as president, and now neo-Fascist, for posterity, I have fallen miserably behind.
I admit, I have been bogged down in studying the Epstein Files, which I am addressing in separate posts.
Trust me, that’s a sh*it show all its own.
***
Here’s what I have so far, with future updates to come:
January 1, 2026: According to the Federal Reserve, the top 1% of Americans now control more wealth than the bottom 90%, the greatest degree of wealth inequality since tracking began in 1989.
Their “share” comes to $55 trillion.
FUN FACT: As the
year progresses, we will learn that the situation gets “better” as the
superrich continue to pile up the dough. We will eventually learn that Donald,
himself, raked in $2.2 billion in 2025.
FUN FACT #2: The U.S. Supreme Court has handed Donald another defeat, ruling that his reasons for sending troops to police blue cities – purportedly to reduce crime – are insufficient. For now, until Donald can figure out a better way to threaten the Constitution, no more troops will be sent to Los Angeles. Troops staged in Chicago and Portland will also be sent home.
I doubt whether most of the MAGA faithful understand why a president’s power to send troops to the states is sharply limited.
But here’s a link that helps explain.
And if you’re too lazy to read a little, just imagine a future world where a Democratic president sends troops to Palm Beach County, to patrol the streets around that den of crimes and sin, Mar-a-Lago.
(We’re assuming Donald will live to be ninety in this analogy.)
FUN FACT #3: Donald did find time today to attack Colorado authorities for sending Tina Peters to jail – just because she illegally shared voter information records with unauthorized individuals.
___
1/2/26: Sometimes I watch Fox News and wonder why there are so many closeted racists serving as guests or hosts. Am I imagining?
Well, not according to Mark Levin – of Fox News.
A battle now brewing on the right pits leading voices against each other – instead of just beating the Hunter Biden laptop dead dog. In particular, Levin has started blasting Megyn Kelly, a former colleague and a few of the other right-wing voices she amplifies. “You see, she was always a degenerate bigot,” he says of Megyn. “This is why she’s cool with Candace Owens and Jack Posobiec. This is why she slobbers over Qatarlson [Tucker Carlson]. She’s part of the Woke Reich — the queen of the modern Klan. More to come.”
First, I find myself agreeing with Levin – which is rare.
Then Kelly fires back. “You’re an old, irrelevant, bitter, angry man who could never make it in the Fox News primetime,” she tells Levin. “We used to laugh at you there for your red-faced tantrums over … everything.”
Yeah, I agree with her, too.
FUN FACT: Owens
recently suggested that Erika Kirk was somehow involved in the assassination of
her husband and when Ben Shapiro attacked her for her stance, Owens called
Shapiro “a midget” and made sure to point out that he was a Jew. There are also
a lot of closeted anti-Semites on the right.
___
1/3/26: No other president has treated facts so cavalierly as the current Human Blob in the White House. Saturday night he posts a link on his Truth Social account to suggest that Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota “directed” Vance Boelter to assassinate Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.
Minnesota
state Sen. Julia Coleman (R), who has repeatedly condemned the
peddling of the misinformation involving Hortman’s death, told The Washington
Post in a statement on Saturday that “the American people, grieving families,
and the legacies of those lost deserve far better” than the spread of false,
harmful conspiracy theories.
“When
leaders across the country — from state senators like me to voices in every
corner — repeatedly call for an end to baseless conspiracy theories, it’s a
powerful signal: We must all reject this behavior outright and refuse to
tolerate it,” Coleman said. “Debate policies fiercely. Fight for what you
believe in. But do not speculate, guess, or spread stories that are plainly
false and deeply harmful.”
___
1/4/26: Here’s a nice collage, consisting of pictures of Donald Trump paling around with Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell.
As far as this blogger knows, he has never hung around with any sexual predators and doesn’t understand why anyone else would.
The blogger has also never said he could grab pussy and get away with it and wouldn’t grab even if he could.
And here’s Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie trying to stir up trouble with Denmark, an ally of the United States, by showing Greenland as part of the United States.
___
1/6/26: Leading White House advisor Stephen Miller shows up on CNN to explain to Jake Tapper how an uncaring world works – and how his boss sees this country behaving in an uncaring fashion on the world stage.
It’s kind of like saying, “Hey, let’s be shitty, just like Russia under Putin.”
(If Miller starts trying to
convince Trump to push critics off fifth-floor balconies, I don’t think I’d be
surprised.)
 |
Harsh - but strangely believable. |
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else,” Miller sneers, “but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
(The blogger would argue that Miller has no idea what has made
America great.)
___
Unjustified ICE shootings.
DEAR MAGA FANS: We who are not fond of your favorite president, and his neo-Nazi trick of sending in armed goons into our backyards would like you to know. We are happy if ICE sticks to business and arrests and deports dangerous criminals.
You would have to be almost willfully ignorant to think that statement would not hold up, if you bothered to talk to anyone outside your bubble.
What we don’t want:
1/7/26: ICE agents shoot and kill Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen, after they insist that she tried to run over them with her vehicle during a protest in Minneapolis. Video clearly shows that the agent who shot her fired all three shots while standing to the side of her moving vehicle.
(At the very least, the agent overreacted.)
 |
Good was talking to agents moments before she was shot. |
*
MEANWHILE, a new White House timeline for January 6, 2021, manages to blame Capitol Police for the riot:
FUN FACT: It is not “fun” to note that Ashli Babbitt here portrayed as a victim of cold-blooded murder, had a history far from innocent. She was put under a restraining order twice, after she rammed the car of her future husband’s then girlfriend. She also had a history of making violent threats.
Plus, she was committing adultery at the time of the ramming – and we know how much the Christian supporters of the president want everyone to follow the Bible down to the last period at the end of Book of Revelations.
(Including the admonition to execute gay people.)
___
1/8/26:
President Trump has called on Congress to sign an appropriations bill and raise the Pentagon budget to $1.5
trillion. I think he forgot he promised to erase the entire national debt if he
had eight years in office. He only has three left. Included will be funding for
the new Trump-Class Battleships – the first of which is expected to cost
between $17.4 and $22 billion.
___
1/11/26: Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Donald Trump agrees with this blogger. “I believe Mr. Trump is beyond repair,” Gates tells reporters. “He is stubbornly uninformed…he is unqualified and unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.”
On X, Shannon Watts posts an explanation of how a normal person might view a variety of shootings:
I was
outraged when Breonna Taylor was shot to death in her home by Louisville police
officers. I was outraged when Luigi Mangione shot a man to death in the streets
of Manhattan. I was outraged when Charlie Kirk was shot to death in Utah. And
I’m outraged that Renee Good was shot to death by our government. Hold on to
your humanity.
*
SOME PEOPLE HOLD TIGHT, while others never had a grip. Six federal prosecutors have now resigned in Minnesota, since it has become clear Trump’s toadies would rather investigate Renee Good’s wife – who was nothing more than a witness when she was killed. Would the DOJ care to look into the details of the shooting and ensure that it was justified? The DOJ would not.
The New York Times explains:
Joseph
H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and
oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that
has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit on
Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.
Mr.
Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed
for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Good, the Minneapolis woman killed
by an ICE agent on Wednesday.
Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.
*
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES orders the DOJ to subpoena Fed Chair Jerome Powell because – bluntly stated – he doesn’t like Jerome Powell or his policies. It doesn’t matter if there were any crimes committed during remodeling of the Fed headquarters. The point for Donald is to punish his foes.
Powell replies,
Powell: The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the federal reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public rather than following the preferences of the president. This is about whether the fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.
___
1/12/26: Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem has a new slogan, as seen on the DHS podium. Holocaust experts were reminded of Nazi policies involving collective responsibility and collective punishment. One of the most famous examples would be what happened after SS leader Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated by Czech partisans. German troops quickly surrounded the village of Lidice, on the assumption that the partisans were based there and so wiped out almost the entire population. All men and boys over the age of fifteen living in Lidice were immediately executed – 173 dead; 19 other men, 60 women and 88 children were murdered later.
The village itself was bulldozed off the map.
___
1/13/26: President Trump is doing his best to “beautify” the nation’s capital – starting by making the White House look crap.
Even the rose bushes (basically
all that’s left of the Rose Garden, now that Donald has had it paved) look
scraggily.
Meanwhile, the malfeasance of the Trump administration was revealed today when the Department of Health and Human Services terminated $2 billion worth of grants meant to fund mental health and addiction programs nationwide.
The cuts were made without warning, causing “a day of panic” as people who worked with the mentally ill wondered what had just happened. More than 2,000 programs across the country were suddenly faced having to curtail services or shut down – and members of Congress got a bipartisan earful.
“If people don’t get access to treatment they just die. That’s a fact,’ said one drug counseling expert. “You can spin this any way people want to, but people are going to die.”
The American Medical Association issuing a statement saying it was “deeply concerned” and called for the grants to be restored.
UPDATE (1/15/26): That
didn’t take long. The Trump administration boneheads have now restored the
grants without explanation.
___
1/14/26: I’m not sure who the weirdest member of the Trump administration really is, but if you’re not getting a creepy vibe from this strange assembly of human beings, you’re lucky, I guess.
Ignorance is bliss?
Today, RFK Jr. – one of the weirdest – showed up on Katie Miller’s podcast – she’s married to Stephen Miller – even weirder; and she’s weird because she loves him. RFK Jr. wanted to talk about Donald Dumpling and his health. According to Kennedy, the boss’ eating habits were “unhinged.”
Then he continued, “The interesting thing about the president is that he eats really bad food, which is McDonald’s, and, you know, candy and Diet Coke. He drinks the Diet Coke at all times.”
But, he added, “He has the constitution of a deity. I don’t know how he’s alive, but he is.”
A “deity?” holy shit.
(I know memes are simplistic, but this one does capture the feeling I get whenever I hear Mr. Miller talk.)
*
I
Sosa-Celis took a bullet to the thigh, and then the two assailants were charged with felony assault.
UPDATE (2/13/26): The
case against the “attackers” is dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot
be refiled – mostly because the ICE agents lied about what had happened.
This case should not be confused with the case of Phillip Brown, like Ms. Good, also a U.S. citizen, also accused of assaulting officers with his car – and also that case was tossed out of court.
Or the case of Miramar Martinez,
who was shot five times and labeled a “domestic terrorist” by a DHS
spokesperson after she allegedly used her own vehicle to “ram” a vehicle driven
by ICE agents, although the ICE agent who shot her admitted later that the
collision was more “side-to-side.” It didn’t help when the agent who opened
fire bragged on social media to his buddies, “I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7
holes. Put that in your book boys.” So,
her case was tossed.
Nor should it be confused with the case of Francisco Longoria, stopped randomly by ICE agents, without probable cause, and who smashed his two front seat windows within 30 seconds of the stop.
Later, federal agents arrived at his home and arrested him, after pointing assault rifles at other members of his family.
Later, federal agents arrived at his home and arrested him, after pointing assault rifles at other members of his family.
(Yeah, his case was also thrown out of court.)
FUN WITH RACIST REPUBLICANS: I should go on record again, saying that most Trump supporters I know personally are excellent people and I do not believe that all MAGA diehards hate people of color.
Still, there are a lot of closeted haters in today’s GOP. In a group chat allegedly used by Republicans on the New Hampshire House Education Committee, a user identified as Chair Rep. Kristin Noble implied state children should be separated into white and non-white schools, writing: “imagine the scores… for them and… us” Yes, imagine being a racist and having a say over the schools in your state. Jim Crow sentiments still appear to live in the heart of Chairperson Noble.
In that regard the “LOL” is particularly telling.
___
1/15/26: U.S. District Judge William Young blasted senior Trump administration officials today, warning against a pattern of “breathtaking” constitutional violations. Judge Young, a Reagan appointee to the bench, called the president an “authoritarian” who expects everyone in the executive branch to “toe the line absolutely.”
The judge added that the
president and his enablers have a “fearful approach” to freedom of speech and
would love to “exclude from participation [in our democracy] everyone who
doesn’t agree with them.”
At issue, in Young’s mind was what he called the administration’s unmerited detentions of pro-Palestinian students last year. The judge ruled last September that senior administration officials engaged in an illegal effort to arrest and deport noncitizen students based on their activism.
“The big problem in this case is that the Cabinet secretaries and, ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment,” he warned. He went on to accuse DHS head Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio of organizing an “unconstitutional conspiracy.”
The goal: Silence critics of Israel – and President Trump’s unquestioning willingness to back up whatever it is that Benjamin Netanyahu wants to do.
As the Washington Post notes,
The
government actions at the core of the case date to early March, when the Trump
administration launched a campaign to detain and deport noncitizen students at
U.S. universities who had been active in opposing Israel’s war in Gaza. Though
not accused of any crime, those arrested spent weeks confined in Immigration
and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, at times hundreds of
miles from where they lived, before being released on bail.
You don’t have to agree with the protesters’ arguments, and this blogger is sympathetic to the Israelis, who suffered a terrible blow on October 7, 2023. But you can certainly see why students – including those with Palestinian roots – might think the sustained bombing of the Gaza strip should end.
UPDATE (7/2/26): An estimated 73,000 Palestinians have
been killed since that attack occurred and another 173,000 have been wounded.
In the original attack, Hamas took 251 hostages and 1,200 Israelis were killed.
UPDATE #2 (today): We
must also report that our NATO allies are sending troop contingents to
Greenland – small thought they are – as a trip line for the United States. The
fifteen French soldiers are a symbol – that NATO still follows the policy, “an
attack on any member is an attack on every member.” Germany, Sweden, Norway,
the Netherlands and Finland have also announced plans to dispatch troops.
___
1/16/26: The president continues to conduct himself like Vladimir Putin’s puppet, having insisted again that the real roadblock to a peace deal is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
In an interview with Reuters, Mr. Trump claimed that the Russian leader was “ready to make a deal”, but it was being blocked by Zelenskyy.
“I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal,” he insisted.
Asked why his attempts at ending the war had so far failed, Trump replied: “Zelenskyy.”
The Ukrainian president responded quickly on X, saying,
Ukraine
has never been and will never be a stumbling block to peace. When Ukrainians
are left without power for 20–30 hours [during brutal winter weather] because
of Russia, and when Russian strikes are aimed at breaking our energy system and
our people, it is Russia that must be put under pressure.
He added, “It is Russian
missiles ... and Russia’s attempts to destroy Ukraine that are clear evidence
that it is not agreements at all that Russia is seeking.”
*
I KEEP REMEMBERING how Donald Dumpling likes to say that 99.9% of cops are great people. (I think most cops are – just like most teachers, including me – and most grocery store clerks, plumbers and seamstresses.)
Not all ICE agents should have access to guns:
Upper right, for example, is David Courvelle, who got away with the rapes by promising the victim he would let her see her daughter. He has pleaded guilty and will now spend three years in prison, but not as a guard.
Upper left, Andrew Paul Johnson
famously promised his two victims part of the money he expected to be paid when
Trump started evening up accounts with his rioter friends; now he’ll be spending life behind bars –
barring a second Donald Dumpling pardon sometime down the grotesque road.
(I was too lazy to look up the other two bums.)
___
1/17/26: Tourists in surprising numbers are now staying away from visiting the United States, probably because they don’t want to have the ICE folks grab them and either club on the head or toss them in the clink.
Also, many foreigners think our
country is led by a gigantic asshole. Six percent fewer tourists visited the U.S. in 2025, while
around the globe tourism was up by almost seven percent. The decline has cost
this country. The United States attracted 68 million tourists last year,
trailing France by 37 million.
*
WELL, THIS STORY STINKS: Mr. Trump has issued a pardon to Arie Eric De Jong III, a porta-potty magnate who was found guilty of dumping sludge illegally into the sewer systems of various California cities.
That way, he got to avoid paying
any fees, dodging millions in fees he would have otherwise had to pay.
___
1/18/26: Trump is seen golfing again at his private club in Palm Beach – which is what Donald really loves.
___
1/19/26: Donald flies to Davos, Switzerland. He’ll spend the next five days at the World Economic Forum, meeting with 3,000 world leaders, from more than 130 countries.
There
will be much to discuss, such as:
Tariffs (Donald loves them).
Wars (The Dumpling claims he ends them).
Greenland (Donald might start a war with our allies to get it).
More tariffs (Give Donald what he demands, or he’ll slap you even harder with the tariffs. He really loves them.)
NATO (Trump hates the Alliance; so does Russia).
Russia (Donald Dumpling has a soft spot for Russia – and for Vladimir Putin, a man after his own heart.)
Threats to U.S. security (According to the president they would include protesters in Minnesota, reporters who ask him hard questions, late night TV comedians, Rep. Thomas Masssie, and the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein).
Indeed, representatives from all our longtime allies are there, including leaders from Denmark, Canada and Great Britain, whose troops died fighting beside our men and women in Afghanistan.
(Look it up, Trump fans.)
*
TRUMP’S PLANE barely touches down before the President of the United States has his thumbs warned up and he’s posting on Truth Social. For some inexplicable reason, he decides to repost a message from “Bobby D” who has 164.7k “followers” on “X.”
After all, what Leader of the Free World hasn’t relied on social media to pick up ideas on how to address complex issues affecting all the nations of the world?
Bobby D posts this nugget: “So at what point are we going to realize the enemy is within? China and Russia are the boogeymen when the real threat is the U.N., NATO and this ‘religion.’
“I put ‘religion’ in quotes because it’s not a religion,” Bobby added. “It’s a [death] cult! Yeh, I went there.”
No insult intended to Bobby D, but I am guessing he has never been to Russia, that he can’t speak Mandarin, and that he probably can’t find Denmark on a blank map of the world. I’m going to bet he knows next to nothing about the Russian and Chinese militaries, or their capabilities to do us harm.
But Donald Dumpling is going to Bobby D for ideas.
A quick look at Bobby’s feed shows me that he basically posts clips of other social media persons, such as “Shannon [flag emoji] I stand with America.” Shannon does the hard reporting, regarding international affairs, with posts like, “Students trending with teachers. All is not lost! This is a fun watch!”
I’m a retired teacher, and it is, in truth, a “fun watch.” But I am not going to Shannon or Bobby D for NATO coverage.
The Dumpling shouldn’t, either.
*
“They shall not grow old in our memory.”
ONLY NOW that The Dumpling is on the ground, he makes it infinitely worse. In a speech to gathered world leaders, he denigrates the sacrifices of other NATO members, and questions our allies resolve to come to our aid (again) if we are attacked. Bah, he says, their soldiers “stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines” in Afghanistan.
This idiocy forces The Guardian, a British newspaper, to remind the world, “A total of 3,486 Nato troops died in the 20-year conflict, of which the majority, 2,461, were US service members.
So, unlike the Dipshit Dumpling, we do the math.
It is true, of course, that we can no longer count on the 1,025 men and women from other NATO countries who died fighting to help us in our effort to crush the Taliban. That would be the men and women, and occasional trans soldier who “stayed a little back” but somehow got hit by bullets in the face, eviscerated by shrapnel from rocket-propelled grenades, or burned to death when their vehicles rolled over hidden mines. And we’re not even counting the thousands of allied troops who were maimed.
We do know, however, who can always be counted on to stay “a little back” during times of war.
Number of Trump family members ever to die in combat, or get wounded, or even get blisters on their feet:
0.
To this very moment, dating back to 1885, when Friedrich Trump landed on U.S. shores and started the American branch of the family, no Trump has ever donned a uniform in times of danger. Certainly not Donald himself.
(I am willing to bet that none
of the next generation of Trumps will serve, either, because service is not
what they do.)
 |
A few of the NATO dead. |
1/20/26: The Dumpling took time out of his busy schedule today to whine again about how he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize because he had saved millions of people and pretty much brought about world peace, while also curing leprosy, chicken pox and halitosis. He said Norway controls who gets it and apparently Norway hates poor Donald.
Next, he will solve world hunger and see if he can win. If not, he’ll just have to learn how to use a hula hoop.
Donald then undercut his chances of winning by posting a picture of himself talking to other world leaders – and in the background, Canada and Greenland are show as part of the United States.
Ha, ha, Donald is a consummate dick.
It quickly turns out that I am not alone in thinking the President of the United States is a dick. Greenlanders post this comical response:
Go to this link to watch the video. You will be glad you did.
*
IF YOU ARE WORRIED that President Trump is stretching the limits of what the Department of Justice can and must do, you are not alone. In a compelling court order issued today by Judge David Novak of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, it is made clear (once again) that Lindsay Halligan had been serving illegally in her position as a U.S. district attorney.
Put plainly, any documents signed by Halligan will now have the same legal weight as my writing my opinion on some matter of law on a roll of toilet paper.
The Court had already ordered her to give up her post, but she had refused and filed a less than satisfactory rebuttal. “Ms. Halligan’s response in which she was joined by both the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General,” Judge Novak explains, “contains a level of vitriol more appropriate for a cable news talk show and falls far beneath the level of advocacy expected from litigants in this Court, particularly the Department of Justice.”
Her refusal, then, to leave her
position, violates “a binding court order” and any further work she might
perform in defiance of that order would expose her and others to
“disciplinary action.”
With that, the Court explained that it would strike the words “United States Attorney” from all filings Halligan might sign, beginning the next day at 12:01 a.m. Then you might say that Judge Novak performs a mercy killing:
The
Court recognizes that Ms. Halligan lacks the prosecutorial experience that has
long been the norm for those nominated to the position of United States
Attorney in this District. Consequently, and in light of her inexperience, the
Court grants Ms. Halligan the benefit of the doubt and refrains from referring
her for further investigation and disciplinary action regarding her
misrepresentations to this Court at this time.
FUN FACT: Novak
was appointed to the
federal bench by Donald Dumpling himself, during his first term in office.
___
1/22/26: Donald may be the only president ever to call upon his Department of Justice to indict his personal enemies.
Let’s hope he’s the last.
___
1/23/26: We can all consider ourselves “safer” if we are complete nincompoops, after ICE agents in Minnesota cleaned up a mob of more than a hundred kneeling clergy, protesting tactics used in Minneapolis.
The protesters were out in -21
degree weather, standing up for justice by kneeling in the cold. As one
observer on X noted, “Just as a general rule, if there are a
bunch of clergy peacefully protesting in the cold and you’re the one dragging
them away in cuffs, there’s a 99.9% chance you’re on the wrong side of history.”
___
1/24/26: ICE agents in Minneapolis shoot and kill Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, involved in an anti-ICE protest. Kristi Noem, head of the Department of Homeland Security, immediately announces that Pretti was “brandishing a gun” before he was shot.
In fact, while Pretti was shown to have kicked out a taillight on a federal vehicle during an earlier protest, on this occasion film shows he was “brandishing” nothing more dangerous than a cellphone.
a)
First: He was sprayed with mace after he tried to
intervene when an ICE agent sprayed another peaceful protester, a female.
b)
Then he was tackled.
c)
Then he was pinned face down by half-a-dozen agents.
d)
Then he was disarmed (because he did have a gun
in his back waistband.
e)
Then two agents shot him dead – while he was pinned
face down – and after he was disarmed.
At the very least, Noem was full
of donkey doo when she made her claims. A federal judge has since ordered the
Trump administration not to destroy or alter evidence in the case, not
that Kristi and her buds ever would.
FUN FACT: Police chiefs from several Minneapolis and area departments report that ICE agents have been stopping off-duty officers on their forces – and other U.S. citizens – without probable cause.
Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley told gathered reporters that “Operation Metro Surge,” as ICE had labeled its operations in the city, is leading to “civil rights violations in our streets.”
There have been “endless complaints,” from people in his district, he says, noting that several in his department had also been stopped by federal law enforcement. “Every one of these individuals is a person of color," Bruley added.
In case you’re MAGA and missed it.
___
The Tariff Dividend check is NOT in the mail.
1/26/26: If you are sitting by your mailbox, anxiously awaiting the arrival of your $2,000 Tariff Dividend check, you should give it up and go watch reruns of your favorite TV shows. Such as, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Real Housewives of Atlanta, and the Mormon-themed Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
(I think we need a show called “Real Housewives Baking Cookies,” but that’s just me.)
To put it plainly, the president has a bit of a math problem – one of many, as we shall see.
That is, his administration liked to brag about tariff revenue for 2025 which came in at $264 billion. With all that cash piling up in federal coffers, Donald started promising. First, the tariff haul would be used to pay all our troops a $1,776 bonus, which Donald would call the “Warrior Dividend.”
Another $12 billion would go out in checks to farmers – who had lost three times as many billions when China cut off soybean purchases in retaliation (for tariffs). Then $20 billion would go to a “Ukraine Victory Fund,” and, so far, the math worked, and then we’d all get a “Tariff Dividend” check for $2,000. But now the math didn’t work because that would cost an estimated $280 billion.
Only Donald wasn’t done “mathing.” He said the tariff dough would help plug the hole he blew in the federal budget, as a result of the One Big Beautiful Act, which would increase the deficit by $545 billion. He also promised that tariff money would allow the Department of War to enjoy a $600 billion increase. And tariff money would help substantially reduce the federal deficit from previous years, so that would mean a few hundred billion more imaginary dollars would be needed.
Mr. Trump also suggested that the genius of his tariff plans would mean it would be possible to completely cut the income tax, “because the money we’re taking in is going to be so large,” and so it was “loaves and fishes” only with coinage.
Sadly, in reality, where Donald
often refuses to go, the federal income tax brings in $2.7 trillion annually.
So that the only way this kind of math could work was if you took LSD before
trying to do any adding.
___
1/27/26: Chris Madel, a candidate running for governor of Minnesota, has dropped out of the race. “I can’t look my daughters in the eye and say I’m running as a Republican,” he explains, “when they’re pulling over Hispanics and Asians because of the color of the skin and what they look like. I did not sign up for that.”
People who did include Stephen
Miller, Katie Miller, and a whole bunch of right-wing racist haters.
___
1/28/26: An immigration judge has dismissed the deportation case brought by Pam Bondi and her ghouls, against Narciso Barranco, who was snagged this past fall while doing dangerous criminal deeds.
Namely, weeding an IHOP restaurant’s garden. Mr. Barranco had been living in the U.S. since the 1990s, and his three citizen sons have all served with the U.S. Marines, including two currently on active duty.
And…WTF!!!!
The Department of Justice announced that it would appeal the judge’s decision. As Military Times magazine notes, Mr. Barranco “has applied for Parole in Place, a program that protects the parents of U.S. military personnel from deportation and helps them obtain permanent residency. If that petition is approved, Barranco will receive a work permit.” His lawyer estimates that the process could take six months.
He is accused of swinging his weed trimmer at ICE agents – making him the kind of dangerous gardener and father of three U.S. Marines who has got to go.
Barrancos
who have served this country in uniform: 3.
Trumps who have served this country in uniform: 0.
Embrace the skunk.
1/30/26: You may sometimes ask yourself, such as on April 15, every year, “Hey, what does the federal government use my tax dollars for?”
Well, the current administration has people working hard to create … memes of Donald Dumpling … looking nothing like the real, in-the-flesh Dumpling. Such as this beauty made with our money:
Then there was this boneheaded meme – which shows Trump advancing across Greenland (note flag, left, in the distance), which is not only a waste of money, but stupidity in ink and AI effort.
There are no penguins in Greenland.
The meme might as well show the president advancing, side by side with a skunk.
Meanwhile, new leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are suggesting that maybe we shouldn’t mandate the vaccine for polio.
In fact, Dr. Kirk Milhoan, whose medical expertise is pediatric cardiology, suggested that the country is in “a different place” than in the 1950s, when polio was an annual summer scourge.
“As you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then,” Milhoan said. “Our sanitation is different, our risk of disease is different, and so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.”
Dr. Milhoan suggested that “herd immunity” might protect us
with no need for the vaccine going forward.
___
1/31/26: If will take historians many years to sort through all the Epstein Files, and most of the pedophiles will be long dead before justice can be served. What we can say is that Donald Dumpling’s new choice for Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, does make a brief appearance or two in the Files.
REDACTED sends Epstein an email on 12/21/2010, for example, listing all the people he can expect to be attending a party at “St. Barths,” or the Isle de France (it’s not clear from context) and where they are staying. Names I recognize (and not necessarily in a good way) include Steve Cohen, Roman Abramovich, Arthur Altschul, Patrick Demarchelier, Frederic Fekkai, Ghislaine Maxwell (who is staying “on Billy Kotick’s boat”), Bret Ratner, Harvey Weinstein, and Jimmy Tisch.
As always, in the Files, there are multiple versions of documents; and the next one I check has an unredacted name for the sender: Peggy Siegal.
In this version, with far fewer redacted names of expected guests/visitors, we can now see several pairs:
Dasha Zhukova/Roman Abramovich
Stephanie Seymour/Peter
Brant
Shirin von Wulfiun/Frederic
Fekkai
Jane Lauder/ Kevin Warsh
Ratner (now shown to be staying
on John Plgozzi’s boat)
Georgina Chapman/Harvey
Weinstein
Meryl/Jimmy Tisch
Then, I am directed to an extensive list of invites to a dinner for William Astor, 9/16/2010, arranged by Siegal, with Warsh apparently invited. This list is forwarded by Leslie Goff (a key Epstein enabler) and, lo and behold Mr. and Mrs. Donald Trump are expected to be in attendance.
Some of these people, and many
others, whose names I have ignored, may be guilty of no sins whatsoever. Warsh
is likely one of those sin-free personages. I am struck however by the circles
in which so many creepy people run. Names in bold, we know, have been
accused of or convicted of sexual assaults – with Seymour, the supermodel, in
bold, having been a victim as a teen. Jimmy Tisch is a cousin of Steve Tisch –
who seems to me to be shady for sure, based on what’s in the Files.
Ugh, it’s a huge dinner – but I also notice Glenn Dubin and his wife Eva Andersson-Dubin, both repeatedly named in the Files.
Rudy Giuliani and his then-wife Judith are expected to be there. Charlie Rose makes the guest list, and so do Mr. & Mrs. Wilbur Ross, although I can’t find Mr. Warsh’s name anywhere.
Rudy will later become famous for telling election-rigging lies and losing a huge defamation lawsuit.
Mr. Ross will serve as Commerce Secretary in the first Trump administration and keep busy on the side, hiding all his millions (or maybe billions) in offshore bank accounts.
The main point might be: This dinner is seven years after Donald says he cut ties with Jeffrey. But he and the lovely, future First Lady are not reluctant to be seen – possibly -in his presence.
(Siegal is the publicist who, after Epstein was jailed in Florida in 2009, set out to refurbish his image.)
Ugh.
FUN FACT – ANOTHER INVITATION: You could spend your entire life chronicling the weird and shady dealings and outright crimes carried out or committed by members of Team Trump and Family Trump both.
This one may not be criminal – but you do wonder when, exactly, Donald Dumpling severed all ties with Jeffrey Epstein.
We now learn that in March 2013, Epstein was invited to a gala to honor New York City’s “best” and “brightest.” Donald would be there, of course, and daughter Ivanka. Other guests would include Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Katie Couric, Blake Lively and Sen. Cory Booker.
Normally, you would assume the person in charge of invites had not learned that Donald J. Trump had by this time cut all ties to the creepy pedophile. Only the person in charge of the gala – who should have known – was Jared Kushner.
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