__________
“This is a stage that all dictatorships reach; when they do the dictator can no longer afford mistakes and always makes them.”
Bernard DeVoto
__________
***
Here’s what I have so far, with future updates to come:
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. |
___
1/14/26: Two brave ICE agents report that were forced to open fire after two men, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, both Venezuelan immigrants, attacked them with a snow shovel and a broom handle.
Sosa-Celis took a bullet to the thigh, and then the two assailants were charged with felony assault.
UPDATE: The case against the “attackers” was dismissed in February, “with prejudice,” meaning it could not be refiled – mostly because it appears 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.
Yeah, his case was also thrown out of court.
___
 |
| Donald gets the cold shoulder at Davos. |
1/19-1/23/26: Donald flies to Davos, Switzerland, on January 19. 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 brags that he ends them).
Greenland (Donald wants it – and might start a war with our allies to get it).
More tariffs (Give Donald what he demands, or he’ll slape you even harder with the tariffs. He really, really loves them.)
NATO (Our president hates the Alliance).
Russia (Donald Dumpling has a soft spot for Russia – and Vladimir Putin, a man after his own heart.)
Threats to U.S. security (According to Donald 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 has barely touched down before the President of the United States can get his thumbs warned up and post 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. |
1/24/26: 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.
____
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.
___
1/28/26: 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
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