On Ms. Noem and Mr. Mullin

Let’s reflect just very briefly on the political demise of former Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem.  The first reflection is one I’ve already made here, and with regard to Ms. Noem, to me the most important:  I was genuinely sorry to see her go.  She had become such a caricature for the Trump Regime’s Nazi-like immigration enforcement activities that I considered every day she remained at her post a day in which millions of moderate Americans would be reminded that they had to vote against Republicans in the upcoming November elections, thus strengthening the chances for American democracy to survive.  I had never seen the $220 million ICE recruitment video starring Ms. Noem that was reportedly pivotal in getting her fired before the furor over it erupted during her recent Senate hearing; now that I have, my primary reaction was sympathy for Ms. Noem’s horse, who had to be both chagrined at being part of such an embarrassing spectacle and worried that Ms. Noem would shoot it when the video was completed, although at the same time being heartened that it wasn’t the biggest horse’s a– … er … behind …  in the production.

On to U.S. OK Sen. Markwayne Mullin, whom President Donald Trump is nominating to replace Ms. Noem as Homeland Secretary.  First, I truly wonder whether Mr. Mullin’s parents simply couldn’t decide whether he looked like a “Mark” or a “Wayne” when he was born.  Based upon what we’ve seen of and learned about him since Mr. Trump put his name forth, it would appear that the Senator’s parents would have been closer to the mark (so to speak 😉) had they named him, “Rocco,” “Spike,” or “Hugger,” but all of us parents understand that no one can predict these things in advance.  😊     

There are those who might rationally oppose Mr. Mullin’s confirmation as Homeland Secretary based upon his comments on Fox News about Alex Pretti the day after ICE Agents murdered Mr. Pretti in Minneapolis:  “A deranged individual who came in to cause massive damage with a loaded pistol was shot and killed.”  For Mr. Mullin to make such a declaration after there was sufficient video available to establish that such was false propaganda would, in a rational world, be sufficient to give any ethical Senator considering Mr. Mullin’s nomination concerns about Mr. Mullin’s judgement and veracity, but given the Trump Regime’s Rogue’s Gallery Cabinet, such a misrepresentation simply means that Mr. Mullin will fit right in.  If I were a Senator, I’d vote to confirm Mr. Mullin.  I still believe in the principle I first articulated in these pages years ago:  any nominee of a President to a senior Administration post should be confirmed, subject to two criteria:  whether the candidate is objectively qualified for the position; and the absence of any other objective disqualifying criteria (prior criminal conviction, demonstrable drug abuse problem, etc.).  Although Mr. Mullin reportedly has no background in homeland security issues, it is seemingly likely that he is no less qualified than any other nominee that Mr. Trump might put forward, and he is arguably less abjectly ill-suited for Homeland Security than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard are for their offices.  Additionally, as we are all well aware, immigration policy is set by Mr. Trump and his (let’s be gentle) autocratically-inclined Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller; whomever they put in the Homeland Security seat is simply going to execute their bidding.  The nominee’s subjective leanings – e.g., in this instance that he is arguably going to be too hardline on immigration policy – shouldn’t, in my view, be part of the assessment.  I hope that Democrats don’t spend too much emotion trying to contest a confirmation which, given Republican control of the Senate and Mr. Mullin’s being a sitting Senator, is a done deal.

Two final impressions:  the first – a parallel if not a repetition of the comment above regarding Ms. Noem — is that Mr. Mullin’s replacement of Ms. Noem, taken together with the Regime’s ICE’s recent withdrawal from “Blue Cities,” will almost certainly release some of the pent-up steam against the Regime’s thuggish immigration enforcement policies that has built up during the first part of this year. I consider this release, this far from November, to be an unfortunate outcome for our democracy. 

Second, if I could make any recommendation to Mr. Mullin, it would be this:  the Regime’s attack on Iran, no matter how one views it from a foreign policy perspective, has changed the fundamentals of your job.  Spend less of your and your staff’s energy on chasing down illegal immigrants who haven’t committed crimes following their initial illegal entry, and immediately bring back any experts in Middle East terrorism that Elon Musk’s moronic DOGE purges may have terminated from the federal government.  Start consulting Homeland Security veterans from the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations about how to best to detect and keep Americans safe from terrorist activities within the U.S. by Iranian sleeper cells.  To anyone who doesn’t believe that such quiescent cells haven’t been here for years, awaiting instructions from the Iranian Regime:  I envy you your life in CandyLand.  Hopefully, Mr. Mullin recognizes that he doesn’t have that luxury.

We’ll see what happens.

Two Impressions on the Epstein Files

[It has occurred to me, given little NPR’s recent reports that the Trump Regime’s Justice Department has failed to release an Epstein victim’s witness statements allegedly describing that victim’s encounters with President Donald Trump, that the mighty New York Times had to be a bit disgruntled at being scooped.  I share a bit of the Times’ chagrin. 😉  What follows was substantially completed before NPR’s recent publication, deferred for other posts.  In entering it now, I’m supposing:  Better late than never.]

You certainly don’t need a recitation of the facts surrounding the evil perpetrated by the late Jeffrey Epstein and those who collaborated with him.  Nor do you need a rundown on the continuing rank hypocrisy and obstructionism – most glaring under the Trump Administration, but certainly not confined to the Trump Administration – of the various law enforcement agencies over many years who have professed sympathy for Epstein’s victims while mostly doing nothing to enable them to obtain justice.  Only two impressions. 

At the time this is typed, in excess of 3 million of what has been reported to be between 5 and 6 million records in the Trump Regime’s Department of Justice’s investigative files on Epstein have been released, and the Department has announced that it will not release the last 2 million.  It’s hard to see how release of these last remaining records can be compelled; Congress could pass a law, but it’s already done that, and the Regime clearly couldn’t care less.  I have also seen it reported that President Donald Trump’s name appears in the files over 1000 times.  Although it is undisputed that he maintained a relationship with Epstein over quite a span of years, the President has vigorously denied that he ever engaged in any illicit activities with Epstein’s underage female victims (or, let’s call them what they were:  girls).  At the same time, it’s clear that Mr. Trump’s toadies at the Department of Justice will follow whatever he orders.  The crux of it is that Mr. Trump – his own savviest media advisor – knows – he knows – that stonewalling on this issue is terribly politically damaging.  If the President was confident that he would not be hurt too badly by the files’ full disclosure, one can tenably surmise based upon his past behavior that the last 2 million records would have been released by now.  So I ponder:  what is the one thing that a man might fear who has been able to maintain the rabid support of his base despite his audio-taped indication that he could “grab [women] by the p—y,” despite his negligently causing hundreds of thousands of unnecessary COVID-related American deaths, despite his inexplicably obsequious relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite his 34 felony convictions, and despite his incitement of an traitorous attack on our nation’s Capitol?  What is the one revelation that a man, who has politically survived his undisputed commission of so many detestable actions with his core base intact, might fear would finally turn his rabid supporters against him?

I’ll leave that one to you.

As to the second impression:  I never thought I’d say this; anyone who knows me or reads these notes may well understandably consider me oblivious, paranoid, senseless as a goose, or dumber than a rock – or all of the above, plus dozens of other similar apt descriptions — but neither you nor I have probably generally considered me to be … naïve.  But I was.  All these years, I scoffed at conspiracist groups who maintained that the world was being run by a global cabal of elite pedophiles.  The Epstein files that have been released seemingly indicate that there does indeed exist an international group of wealthy business and government elites across the political spectrum who have and do indeed believe that they are entitled to abuse and destroy the lives of the vulnerable for their own pleasure.  Although it is still uncertain which of the powerful men coming into Epstein’s orbit exploited the women trafficked by Epstein, it seems clear that given the number of men named and the number of Epstein victims that have come forward, that many, many men were involved.  While these conspiracists were clearly wrong with regard to some vital particulars – the pedophilia cabal they warned against obviously does not include all of the globally politically and financial powerful, it is certainly not limited to left wing elites, and (wait for it) Donald Trump is most certainly not the man who is going to bring it to justice for the victims — arguably one must concede that this particular conspiracy theory was not entirely without a grain of reality.

I never believed it.  One or two megarich and powerful monsters, sure; we have constant evidence of the evil in the world.  But the kind of concerted and broad ring that Mr. Epstein appears to have developed and serviced?  I never thought that such could actually exist.  I was confident that these conspiracists were entirely wacked out, howling at the moon about global pedophilia rings while standing in a Los Angeles parking lot waiting to prove that the 1969 lunar landing was a hoax or scanning the sky for Italian lasers altering voting machines.

It would appear that their claims of the existence of an international pedophilia ring weren’t entirely wrong, after all.

The State of the Union I’m Hoping For

This post runs contrary to my general rule against writing and posting on the same day; it arises from an email exchange I had with a close friend earlier today.

President Donald J. Trump delivers his Presidential State of the Union Address to Congress this evening.  All who care are aware that Mr. Trump’s conduct of the presidency during the first year of his second term has been so disreputable that his approval rating has plummeted among all voter segments save his hardest-core supporters, and in even that segment he has sustained erosion.  I have heard commentators opine in recent days that because the speech will be watched by a wide swath of Americans across the political spectrum, the President’s advisors see this State of the Union Address as perhaps his last opportunity (think about that; he’s only been back in office a year) to right his sinking popularity and at the same time provide a campaign lifeline to Republican candidates representing swing areas (and possibly not-normally-swing areas) who seemingly currently face the prospect of a political bloodbath.  To achieve the result that Mr. Trump’s advisors and his terrified Republican officeholder supplicants hope for, Mr. Trump will need to project a reasonable tone, acknowledge the majority of Americans’ fears about their economic circumstances and the country’s future while laying out specific proposals to address these Americans’ financial plight, express regret about the Supreme Court’s recent ruling vitiating his tariff policy without descending into vituperation, point out the way his administration has shut down the border while perhaps indicating that ICE will be adopting a lighter touch in its activities within our cities, etc., etc., etc.

I am confident that these Republican worthies (obviously using that term loosely) fervently hope he will avoid a harsh, combative tone of denial, or claim that America is in a golden age, or claim that America is loved around the world, or any declaration that affordability is a hoax, or any declaration that his administration intends to take steps to prevent widespread voter fraud in the 2026 elections, or personal attacks on Democrats, or racially-tinged attacks on immigrants, or above all, personal attacks on the Supreme Court – including the two Justices he appointed — that recently struck down his fairly unpopular tariff policy.  (I admit that I felt perverse amusement when following the adverse decision, Mr. Trump referred to the three Republican-appointed Justices who rejected his claim to broad tariffing authority as “lapdogs”; I considered his comment an unwittingly indictment of the three Republican-appointed Justices who did vote to uphold his tariffing authority – Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh – who are, indeed, lapdogs.)  

You and I are both sufficiently aware of my fallibility, but I am nonetheless going to make a straightforward pronouncement here:  Mr. Trump is at this point congenitally incapable of performing in the manner his advisors wish and his Republican supplicants need to politically survive.  He will claim that under his leadership, that our union is strong; that the economy is strong; that the world is more secure, and he alone has been able to bring peace in about 100 countries (none of which actually seem to be at peace 😉); that he does intend to take steps to avoid voter fraud in certain areas (all Democratic strongholds); that ICE has made the country safer; and that the Supreme Court has acted shamefully and hurt our country by its recent tariff ruling, and he intends to impose more tariffs.  In short, he will adopt the combative tone and say all the things that his advisors and fellow Republicans want him to avoid. 

Although I have continued with my recent months’ habit of not watching or listening to Mr. Trump’s lies and loathsome diatribes – my heart is not that strong – I intend to watch the address tonight, hoping for the best – the best being that Mr. Trump will indeed perform as I have predicted.  Although one is heartsick at the hardship, the lost and ruined lives, the irreparable damage to innocent children’s psyches that this Regime has cruelly wrought, it is seemingly clear that each report of a new despicable outrage by the Regime – from its ICE’s Nazi-like activities and the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, to its continued refusal to even acknowledge let alone address many Americans’ economic plight, to its continued refusal to provide impoverished Americans with healthcare financial assistance, to its refusal to follow the Epstein law and provide justice to the Epstein victims, to its threats to invade Greenland, to its attacks on its own Supreme Court (which must make even some semi-perceptive MAGAs wonder if he’s acting legally), to its plastering Mr. Trump’s name on and flying banners with Mr. Trump’s picture from various federal buildings, to … you get it (I apologize if I have left out any of the Regime’s shameless activities you find the most offensive) – has, at one level, become means to an end.  As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the House of Commons in June, 1940 – and I make this analogy intentionally, and not lightly – “We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.” At this point, I don’t want to see Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., or Epstein-implicated Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick fired; they serve the same emotive rallying point for Regime opponents as MAGAs used to point to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.  If Mr. Trump was savvy enough to jettison some of these subordinates, it would take some of the steam out of the Regime’s opposition.    

Returning to a theme you have heard me repeat here endlessly: given the majority of American voters’ selection of Donald Trump in November of 2024, I – like our European allies — have lost and will probably never regain confidence in the good sense of the majority of American citizens.  It is clear that in order to get the pivotal segment of our citizens who inexplicably thought Mr. Trump was the solution to their difficulties to continue to see reality, they must be regularly confronted with Regime outrages.  Ironically – and at the same time unfortunately and happily — Mr. Trump seems willing to accommodate this need.

I would suggest that we must face the fact that at this point there is no chance – zero — that we as a nation are in a position to face the myriad of pressing substantive problems we should be addressing – the economic insecurity of a large percentage of our people, what meaningful work can be developed for our citizens whose skill sets may be less well suited to the automated future, our federal debt, climate change, artificial intelligence, progress in the health sciences, the improvement and broadening of our education systems, a coherent immigration policy, our proper role in world affairs, you name it – until we manage to stifle the Regime of ignorance, denial and autocracy now governing our country.  We need to put our substantive concerns aside, and for the present absorb the future Regime outrages that seem likely to further distress the pivotal middle segment of our citizens as setbacks that might ultimately enable us to preserve our democracy.  Let the President continue to blithely deny that many Americans are suffering economically.  Let him idiotically withhold vaccines, moronically declare Tylenol unsafe for pregnant women.  Let him impose more illegal tariffs.  Let him withhold the last 2 million Epstein documents.  Let him fly his picture from every building in Washington.  Indeed, let him bulldoze the West Wing, erect a castle, and paint his face on it.  These are arguably means to an end. 

There are, of course, two exceptions to this rule.  The first is that we don’t want any more people’s lives sacrificed to Regime violence.  The second involves the measures that the Regime is almost certainly going to attempt to subvert free and fair 2026 federal elections.  These must be contested by all legal and peaceful means available.  I’ll venture that the culmination is likely to arrive this summer when Mr. Trump knows — when it absolutely sinks in – that a fair election will be a tidal wave against him; that he will be facing circumstances, unlike his loss in 2020 — which, although clear, was undeniably close in states such as Georgia and Wisconsin – where most citizens will intuitively know from their own feelings that despite Regime claims, Republican defeats weren’t “rigged,” weren’t due to “voter fraud.”  

That will be our most dangerous period.  At the start of the Regime’s term, I thought the struggle might be coming in 2028; as I’ve indicated more recently, I think that it will be upon us in 2026.  (Get ready to attend your next local NO KINGS rally on March 28.  😊)  In a positive statement in which I wholeheartedly believe:  if we can get through it, we are still the United States of America, the most democratic nation in the history of the earth, which despite its faults has through its goodwill, industry, and initiative done more good for more people than any other nation in history and solved the greatest number of the greatest problems humankind has faced.  The substantive and political challenges we now confront can be addressed – if not entirely during my generation’s lifetime, during the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren — if we manage to secure our democracy.

We’ll see what happens tonight.

On Lenten Fasting: Redux

[Here I republish a note that has been posted on a number of past Ash Wednesdays – and will very likely be republished on future Ash Wednesdays for as long as these pages continue – because I find its teaching a more spiritual perspective than the traditional concept of Lenten denial.]

Today is Ash Wednesday:  in the Christian world, the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period of reflection and performance of penance for one’s sins in preparation for Jesus’ Passion and Death on Good Friday and Resurrection on Easter Sunday.  It is a time in which Christians have traditionally fasted – customarily understood to mean that one of faith will willingly bear the pang of hunger, or endure some other discomfort – so as to identify in a microscopic way with the Lord’s suffering.  Even so, I offer the following Scriptural description of another means of fasting by which one might embrace the spirit of Lent:

“Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!

Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance:

That a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:

Releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke;

Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke;

Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;

Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.

Then, your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed;

Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and He will say:

‘Here I am.’”

 Isaiah 58:  4-9 

On Puerto Rico

For my own psychological wellbeing, I cling to the thought that I share very little in common with Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson, but I must admit that like him, I had never heard of Bad Bunny before Mr. … er … Bunny was named as the halftime headliner at the just-concluded Super Bowl.  (I have since learned that Mr. Bunny’s actual name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. 😉)  As will come as no surprise to anyone who read a recent post in which I indicated in passing that my musical tastes are mostly confined to soft rock, Sinatra-type pop and jazz, I am not a particular fan of Latino music any more than I am of opera, classical, country, or rap.  At the same time, the political hullaballoo that had arisen over Mr. Martínez Ocasio’s selection and appearance made us tune in to watch his show (neither of us had any interest in the game; I haven’t watched a Super Bowl since the last Packers’ championship).  I admit that given reports of Mr. Martínez Ocasio’s clear denunciation of Trump Regime practices toward Latin Americans in his speech at the recent Grammy Awards, I had become a fan without having ever heard him, and was intrigued as to what approach he might take when performing during the world’s most-watched music performance segment.

[An aside:  although there haven’t been too many, it’s always fun to see an entity with more influence than the Trump Regime thumb its nose at the Regime.  The NFL doesn’t give a damn what the Regime thinks, because it can afford not to; its numbers keep growing.  As I recall, Costco continues its DEI program despite Regime pressure because its MAGA members continue to patronize the chain; Costco’s deals are too good (Costo is, of course, doing more to keep Americans’ costs down than the Regime).  Although Mr. Trump is now suing JPMorgan Chase & Co, the bank certainly has the resources to defend (with almost certainly more talented lawyers) what is arguably another Trump spite claim, and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, our nation’s most powerful banker, has made it clear tacitly if not explicitly that he is confident that after Mr. Trump passes from the scene, JPMorgan Chase – and he — will still be here.]

But back to the show, before getting into what this note is actually about.  Mr. Martínez Ocasio, obviously, did the entire show in Spanish.  I, of course – despite four college semesters of Spanish a thousand years ago – understand no Spanish beyond “gracias,” “agua,” and “aqui.”  I accordingly spent most of the performance — particularly at the points at which Mr. Martínez Ocasio was gesturing … er … downward – observing to TLOML, “I wonder whether he’s talking about unity or telling Trump to [well, you can fill in the rest 😉].”

Apparently, it was the former.  Certainly wiser 😊.

That said, the emotion I felt most strongly after the show was … shame.  Shame at the way we have ignored Puerto Rico, turned our back on it, let it down.  These are our people.

Two aspects of Mr. Martínez Ocasio’s show particularly caught my attention.  The first was the extras scaling power polls to remind us of the devastation and prolonged loss of electrical power that the island suffered following Hurricane Maria in 2017, the first year of the first Trump Administration.  Our response to our fellow citizens’ hardship was, by all accounts, pitiful.  (Most will recall that at one point Mr. Trump himself went down there and tossed rolls of paper towel or some such at Puerto Ricans, and then left.)  President George W. Bush’s clearly inadequate response to the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 put a dent in his popularity – not only in New Orleans, or in Louisiana, or in the South, but across the nation — from which he never fully recovered.  Granting that COVID, George Floyd’s murder, and Mr. Trump’s already-evident autocratic inclinations dominated the 2020 presidential race, I don’t remember the Trump Administration’s inadequate response to Hurricane Maria even being mentioned by any candidate during the campaign.  It certainly didn’t occur to me, nor, after a certain period following Maria’s assault, do I recall it being regularly addressed in the news outlets we employ.  (It’s a quick reminder that unless a situation or issue is personal to one, one moves on when the outlets one utilizes moves on.) 

One point I did consider in the weeks after Maria hit the island:  as reporters intoned that Puerto Rico’s terrain was making recovery efforts more difficult, it occurred to me that since we undoubtedly have Pentagon war plans to cover every conceivable scenario, if Cuba, Columbia, or Venezuela – all closer to Puerto Rico than Miami – had hypothetically invaded Puerto Rico, there would be no doubt that as we airlifted thousands of soldiers in to defend the island in a matter of hours, the difficult terrain would suddenly be a minor hurdle to establishing power and communications for a military that did so in South Pacific and Southeast Asian jungles and Middle Eastern deserts.  (To boot, those of MAGA tendencies – the ones seemingly most loudly offended by Mr. Martínez Ocasio’s Super Bowl appearance — would have been the first to vociferously seek to defend “our” island against the invasion.)

There was no invasion, only a hurricane.  So we ignored it.  We didn’t care.

The second aspect of Mr. Martínez Ocasio’s show catching my eye was his hoisting of a Puerto Rican flag with its star depicted on a light blue field, which I had learned before the performance is a symbol of a claim not for Puerto Rican statehood, but for Puerto Rican independence.  It has made me reflect.  I have long favored statehood for Puerto Rico; it is closer to the so-called mainland United States than either Hawaii or the main bulk of Alaska, and with a population exceeding 3 million, it has more people than 18 of our states [the majority “red” (including Alaska) but a significant number “blue” (including Hawaii), and the District of Columbia].  Admitting the island as our 51st state has for years seemed to be a no-brainer held up only by politics.  Mr. Martínez Ocasio’s clear preference for Puerto Rican independence made me ponder my own parochialism.  I have always assumed – without doing any research – that the majority of Puerto Ricans wanted Puerto Rico to become a state.  (Until very recently, I literally knew more about Scots’ preferences toward their nation’s independence from the United Kingdom than I knew about my fellow American citizens’ view toward the sovereignty of their island.)  According to the now ever-present “AI Overview,” it does appear that close to 60% of Puerto Ricans do indeed favor Puerto Rico becoming a U.S. state over other alternatives, but a growing minority favors independence.  A dwindling minority favors retaining the island’s current “colonial” status. 

It is clear from the outcry in MAGA quarters about Mr. Martínez Ocasio’s performance that MAGA’s opposition to Puerto Rican statehood amounts is more than pure numbers (i.e., opposition to admittance of a state whose liberal-leaning citizens would select 2 U.S. Senators and approximately 4 U.S. House Representatives who would help thwart its retrogressive agenda).  It is racism.  Puerto Ricans are too brown, too Latin.

Since the majority of Puerto Ricans still favor a status of U.S. statehood over independence, I do as well.  But now – I will watch.  If the majority ever joins Mr. Martínez Ocasio in a preference for island independence, I’ll heartily support that position, and will expect every citizen of New Hampshire – one of our original 13, with currently less than half of Puerto Rico’s population, boasting the state motto, “Live Free or Die,” its citizens no longer satisfied 250 years ago to be a colony – to join me.  (Maybe MAGAs will favor Puerto Rican independence as well, since they clearly don’t consider Puerto Ricans “American” enough to be … Americans.)

But in the meantime — given the MAGA outrage that accompanied Mr. Martínez Ocasio’s performance, and its pathetic need for a “counterprogramming” “American” show – let us relish that in appearing before over 130 million people … the Bunny got their goat.  😊

David French:  This Is Not a Drill

Sometimes, a blogger, no matter how earnest, should get out of the way and let a pro do it.  Below you will find a link to a February 1, 2026, column by New York Times Columnist David French.  I consider it the most important piece you will read this year, due to its combination of acuity and timeliness.  If you have access to it but haven’t read it, do so now.  For those reading these notes who don’t, I was pretty tempted to cut and paste it here – I am pretty darn confident that the Times and Mr. French wouldn’t feel threatened by the Noise – but my years engaged with copyright law have dissuaded me; after all, somebody has to follow the rules.  So – if you don’t currently have access to the Times, GET IT, simply for access to this one piece.   

My only aside:  at one point in his column, Mr. French refers to President Donald Trump’s “ … base, the people who trust him more than any news source …”  Something that happened very recently, that even I – think about that — found completely unnerving:  one of us was talking to a family friend, a diehard Trump supporter, and it became clear that this friend was completely oblivious to the reality that current polls show that a notable majority of Americans disapprove of Mr. Trump’s conduct of the presidency, that an even more marked majority of Americans have deep reservations about the Regime’s thuggish ICE raids, that Mr. Trump has significantly degraded – not enhanced — America’s standing in the world, and that all of Mr. Trump’s Cabinet picks aren’t all wonderful.

Completely oblivious. 

What percentage of our citizens fall into this category?  At a guess – a quarter?  Wouldn’t one likewise guess that today, a quarter of Russian citizens truly support Vladimir Putin?  Or that a quarter of Venezuelan citizens genuinely supported Nicolás Maduro before America deposed him?

If you’ve got the guns, that’s all it takes.

It Could Be Coming Sooner Than I Thought

Late this past week, a good friend – on substantive issues, more liberal than I am — celebrated a birthday, and in response to our Happy Birthday text, responded in effect, “It’ll be happier if I don’t have to read one of your posts today” – i.e., he didn’t want to be reminded on his birthday of the dire dangers I keep maintaining in these pages that our democracy now faces.  I burst out laughing; it was the only moment of humor – albeit gallows — I’ve felt for quite a while about how things are developing, and the only note of levity that will appear in this post.  His wish was granted; I had nothing scheduled to run that day, but would have deferred any scheduled entry if there had been.

His birthday is now past.  If today is your birthday, I strongly suggest you that now exit this site.

You don’t need me to recount the details of ICE agents’ murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on January 24.  It is apparently undisputed that Mr. Pretti was an American citizen, a VA intensive-care nurse with no criminal record.  He was carrying a concealed firearm at the time he was accosted by ICE, but multiple credible outlets have reported that he had the legal permits to do so and the New York Times is reporting that there is no sign in videos that Mr. Pretti “pulled his weapon, or that agents even knew he had one until he was already pinned on the sidewalk.”  Virtually any video of the incident makes clear that multiple ICE agents were all over this one man.  I understand that there are estimates that Mr. Pretti was shot up to 10 times.

Minneapolis is now in tumult.  MN Gov. Tim Walz has activated the Minnesota National Guard to try to keep order.  How these troops will interact with the federal ICE agents remains to be seen.

You’ve already heard more than enough from me in recent days; until Mr. Pretti’s murder, I had intended to give both you and me a break for a while.  Of the points made below, the one that primarily prompted me to enter this note is the reference to a potential coming culmination near its conclusion.

The fact that a number of Regime officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, were already publicly exonerating the ICE agents and defaming Mr. Pretti as a domestic terrorist before – as anyone with the IQ of a rock should realize — the Regime could possibly have had time to collect and verify the facts of the shooting, demonstrates that the Regime has no interest in fairness or truth; that, to paraphrase Comedian Jon Stewart’s comment a while back about President Donald Trump’s holding a Great Gatsby Party while millions were having their food assistance cut off:  The Regime doesn’t give a f—k about even looking like it gives a f—k.  They don’t give a f—k – at all.  (I know; I just wasted your time with the obvious; couldn’t help myself; I apologize.)

At the same time, I predict that this recent shooting will not reduce Mr. Trump’s dismal approval ratings, or the public’s now-decidedly negative view of his immigration enforcement, by more than another a point or two.  Any citizen who is paying attention and was willing to believe his/her own eyes made up his/her mind about the Regime’s ICE’s Nazi Sturmabteilung-like activities in the days following ICE’s murder of Renee Good.  Any such citizen didn’t need another murder to be convinced.

Now, to the most chilling:  it is apparently undisputed that in a Saturday letter to Mr. Walz, Attorney General Pam Bondi offered to “bring an end to the chaos in Minnesota” – which one can reasonably infer is an offer by the Regime to tone down ICE agents’ activities — in return for several Minnesota state concessions including, most ominously, turning Minnesota voter rolls over to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to “confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law.”  Again, you don’t need me to point out that this is a blatant attempt to gain information which will facilitate the Regime’s subversion of the upcoming 2026 federal elections in a “blue” state.  A point I find intriguing that I haven’t seen anybody else make is that it was Ms. Bondi who made this blatantly extortive and extralegal demand.  Ms. Bondi’s job is to prosecute those who are violating federal law.  She has nothing to do, per se, with immigration enforcement.  That is Ms. Noem’s job; it is Ms. Noem who has the authority to turn up or down ICE enforcement.   The fact that Ms. Bondi made the offer to reduce ICE pressure in return for Minnesota’s providing the Regime access to state’s voter rolls – which obviously have nothing to do with immigration enforcement — shows the concerted, coordinated nature of the Regime’s attack on both our civil rights and our electoral processes. 

An aside; I just can’t resist a comment on the Second Amendment-obsessed, MAGA-related irony tragically apparent in Mr. Pretti’s death.  Much of the justification of the ICE agents’ shooting of Mr. Pretti has focused on Mr. Pretti’s possession of a firearm (of which they weren’t even aware, when they first wrestled him to the ground), and the risk that the agents allegedly felt when they discovered the gun – despite Mr. Pretti’s legal right to carry the weapon the way he did, and video proving that he did not pull or brandish it at officials as Regime officials have falsely claimed (and that an ICE agent had indeed taken the weapon from him before they killed him).  Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t much of MAGA’s spirited defense of the Second Amendment based upon the premise that the Amendment is needed to enable a citizen to protect him/herself against unconstitutional governmental overreach?  Here, a fascist regime is using a citizen’s legal possession of a weapon which he did not draw as a rationale for … killing him.  Again, if this wasn’t so gut-wrenching, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Another aside, which I would submit is extremely important for our democracy:  the current battle between Netflix and Paramount for the acquisition of Warner Brothers, which, among its other properties, owns CNN.  CNN is amongst the least commercially valuable of Warner Brothers’ assets that will be obtained by its new owner, but the transfer of CNN ownership is clearly very important to Mr. Trump, who wants to see Warner Brothers sold to Paramount – controlled by the Ellison family, vigorous Trump supporters – rather than to Netflix.  The Warner Brothers Board of Directors keeps trying to fend off Paramount offers, and to sell to Netflix.  May its efforts be successful.  All that read these pages are well aware of our affinity for MSNOW’s Morning Joe, but when news happens, we don’t turn our TV to MSNOW, but to CNN (sorry, Joe 😉).  While covering Mr. Pretti’s murder, CNN has minced no words demonstrating that ICE’s justifications are hogwash.  If the Ellison family gains control of CNN, CNN’s factual reporting will stop the day after the takeover is finalized.  For the good of democracy, we need CNN to remain one of our now alarmingly-dwindling, widely-disseminated credible news outlets.  

Of course, Mr. Walz and the Minnesota legislature are not going to agree to surrender the state’s voter rolls to the Regime.  Such a surrender would be the equivalent of Denmark giving up Greenland to the United States.  Which means that ICE will continue its brutal activities, and despite the efforts of Minnesota’s National Guard, the unrest in Minneapolis may likely correspondingly escalate.  Where we are is what happens next.

Within the past week – it seems like weeks ago, but we’re in Trump time – I ventured that if Mr. Trump ordered a military invasion of Greenland, as he was then threatening, the presence of waiting NATO troops meant that there would be shooting, and that both American and NATO troops would die.  I further ventured that if such occurred, given the vast majority of Americans’ disagreement with Mr. Trump’s intentions to invade an ally, those dead soldiers would mean the end of his presidency in the democratic sense – that he would then either become a lame duck with three years formally remaining in his term, or, to maintain de facto control of the country, that he would then have to declare Martial Law and institute a dictatorship.  I will pose that if continuing brutal ICE activities incite accelerating unrest in Minneapolis, the President will soon be placed in the same political position as he would have been had he invaded Greenland.  If he cites the Insurrection Act and deploys active-duty military to the streets of Minneapolis – which will already have a blizzard of Minnesota National Guard, ICE agents, and Minneapolis law enforcement on the scene, the closest we have had to a militarily-occupied city since the end of the Civil War — riots will ensue.  Most Americans will conclude that he is deploying military against American citizens to quell unrest that he precipitated.  It will mean the end of his presidency in the democratic sense.  He will then either resign himself to being an emasculated lame duck – which I would submit is not within his compass — or he will be willing to declare Martial Law and to in effect institute a dictatorship. 

I wouldn’t venture a wager as to how events will now go.  Mr. Trump is not a strategist; in any encounter, he seemingly never has any specific “end result” in mind; he thinks tactically — he simply pushes as hard as he can, and sees how the other side reacts.  Despite his reputation for “doubling down” when confronted, if he sees that events in a given situation are not shaping up to his liking and that he doesn’t have an overwhelming advantage, he will – as he did in Greenland — look for a face-saving measure to step back from the brink.  To the extent that he is not consumed by delusion, I would expect that he will see that any further escalation in Minnesota will narrow his options to the two above.  He may not – at least yet – want to go there.  Or he might.  I would forthrightly predict a hypertoxic confrontation if White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller – who is, more than Ms. Noem, truly the architect of the ICE enforcement approach – was making the final call; but as I observed in an earlier note on Greenland, Mr. Miller was the Administration official making the most bellicose declarations about military deployment there, but in the last analysis, Mr. Trump – who clearly is still the boss – had no trouble undercutting him.  The Regime’s offer to Mr. Walz, no matter who made it, may have been its first maneuver to step back from the brink.

We’ll see what happens.

After the Pretti shooting, another friend – now closely following events, but who hasn’t spent a lifetime being a Political Science/Policy/History geek – mentioned to me at being literally shocked that the Regime, despite all existing video evidence in the Good and Pretti murders, would simply lie to the American people about what had happened, and keep on lying.  The comment made me pause and reflect:  although I am outraged, saddened, and a number of other emotions at the Regime’s activities, why am I not shocked at the Regime’s systemic lying?  The answer came readily enough:  because I am a lifetime Political Science/Policy/History geek, and once I internalized – in the last year and a half of the President’s first term — that Donald Trump and his true cohort had fascist tendencies, watching them lie, as abhorrent as it is, has been no more surprising to me than the punchline of the story of the scorpion who stings the frog swimming the spider to safety. 

It’s just their nature.   

Even if it’s not your birthday — too dark, you say?  Let us hope so.  Whether he will publicly admit it or not, Mr. Trump is clearly acutely aware that if traditional federal electoral processes are allowed to proceed unfettered this November as they have for the last 250 years, Republicans (and thus, he himself; he is the Republican brand) are likely to receive such a resounding rejection that not even he will be able to blame it on election fraud.  One has to have significant doubt that his fragile ego can face such a prospect.  As I have suggested on one earlier occasion, I think what will ultimately transpire – if not in the near term, at some point in the future — is more likely to depend not on how far Mr. Trump and his cohort are willing to go, but upon how far our professional military is willing to follow them.  Will our commanders and soldiers – not Mr. Trump’s ICE thugs – follow any Regime orders to forcefully subdue peaceful American citizen demonstrators?

I apologize at the blizzard of posts that I have dumped upon you in the last week.  Although I am honored that you read them, I can well understand that you could feel that enough is enough.  I may not, as I anticipated before Mr. Pretti’s killing, post for a while; on the other hand, if there is yet another new Regime outrage today, I might post tomorrow.  The catharsis that posting in these pages provides is, at this point, for me their most valuable attribute; if you are finding the notes exhausting – as I think our friend who just celebrated his birthday does, although I’m pretty confident that he agrees with their substance – just delete ‘em.  Give it a rest for a while. 

No matter what, if one wishes to oppose Regime activities, always stay peaceful.  If those who oppose the Regime fail to remain peaceful, all is lost practically and morally.  But be ready for what comes next.

The fate of our democracy could be coming sooner than I thought. 

Mr. Warhol Predicted our Government’s Failure

This is simply a plaint, nothing you haven’t already realized yourself, indeed something I think I may have already noted here at some time in the past, but one of the perks of having a site like this is the opportunity to state the obvious when you wish to.  Although one could decry the injustice inherent in a couple of the observations made below about the complexion and standing of our early members of Congress, I don’t think anyone can dispute their accuracy.

This also the rare post that I think any American of any political persuasion across our entire spectrum would agree with.

A large share of our people are currently bemoaning the fact that our toothless Congress – some would instead characterize the members of Congress as lacking other body parts than teeth – are refusing to stand up to President Donald Trump although they – Republicans as well as Democrats – are well aware that his excesses are dangerous for our country and do little or nothing to address the issues of greatest concern to their constituents.  Instead, they cower in corners and whisper.  Why?  We’ve brought it upon ourselves with our descent into the social media snippet, reality TV, hyperbole, glitz, and Let No Complex Thought Be Left Unthought Culture.  The trouble with our Congress today is not that it is filled with people who fundamentally believe in MAGAism or Democratic Socialism, or in White Christian America or Black Lives Matter, or in Regulation or Deregulation, or in Abortion or Choice, or in Guns or No Guns, or in anything else.

They believe in Andy Warhol.

Mr. Warhol, as virtually all are aware – at least of his imputed observation, if not that it is attributed to him – was quoted by Time Magazine in 1967 as saying, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”  It doesn’t matter that it is now disputed that Mr. Warhol actually ever uttered his most famous statement, or if he did, that he was the first to say it; it will forever be attributed to him. 

What matters is the observation’s continuing resonance – much truer today than when the quote appeared in Time almost 60 years ago.  Our members of Congress need – apparently, lust for – fame.  They need everybody to know that they’re somebody.  Apparently, simply being a member of Congress makes them somebody.  That’s why we have no functioning federal legislative branch.

I will assert that the situation we have today was unfathomable for the Founding Fathers.  In a time when only white men could vote and, practically speaking, only rich white men could literally afford to donate their time – that is indeed what they were doing — to participating in the federal government, the notion that these proud landowners would totally obsequiously surrender the prerogatives of their Congressional offices to the President of the United States, or change their views to stoop to pander their constituents – the vast, vast majority of whom were incredibly poorer and incredibly less versed in the matters of the country and the world than they were — was inconceivable to them.  In the Declaration of Independence, a number had literally pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the founding of a new national enterprise.  They didn’t enter Congress to become somebody; each of them already was somebody.  Their sentiments upon entering Congress may be best expressed in the words of another politician in another nation at almost the same time — Irish-Anglo Edmund Burke, considered the founder of modern Conservativism (you know, the real kind), who once told his Parliament constituents that a representative’s “ … unbiased opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living.  Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

Now, we have a bunch of gutless lickspittles who pander to the basest tastes of their constituents so they can keep their tender tushies in warm cushy Congressional seats.  It is clear that the lust to keep these seats isn’t about the actual political power or purpose they provide; they have entirely ceded these to the President of their party (startlingly true right now with the particularly unscrupulous and ruthless Mr. Trump, but just as true on the other side of the political aisle when the president is a popular Democrat).  At this point, it seemingly isn’t always even about a normal citizen – one of us — being able to make him/herself a somebody by entering Congress, because it seems that more and more members of Congress already are “somebody” in the traditional sense – i.e., wealthy; so the office cannot be for the financial advantages or societal entrée it might thereafter provide.  (Actually, for our really wealthy members of Congress, it seems that the choice came down to running for Congress or buying a professional sports team, and buying a Congressional seat was cheaper and easier than buying a professional franchise.)

No, it’s as Mr. Warhol (apocryphally, at least) said:  it’s about the Fame.  “Look, look at me.  I not only need to be somebody; I need you to know I’m somebody!”  Mr. Trump is of course the most shameless example of it, but virtually all of them suffer from it.  (Oh, for the good old days when Robber Barons like John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Henry Ford, who were already confident that they were somebody, were satisfied to run their businesses and exploit the vast majority of Americans from behind the scenes without feeling the need to foist their views upon our citizens in public. 😉)

You want evidence?  (Although I don’t think you need it.)  It’s said today that Republican members of Congress fear Mr. Trump.  Actually, they don’t.  What they fear is his influence with their constituents – not the same.  Let’s assume for a moment that we do have free and fair elections in 2026, that current projections of a dramatic Democratic capture of the House of Representatives come to fruition, and that credible polls thereafter attribute the Republican electoral debacle to the unpopularity of the Trump Regime.  In such event, what do you want to bet that the most dangerous place to be the day after the election will be at the door of the Republican Congressional cloakroom as those Republicans who did survive rush out to find a camera to distance themselves from Mr. Trump and all that his Regime has done during its first two years? 

I know.  You won’t take the bet.

I have to admit that I used to be firmly in favor of term limits for members of Congress.  I guess I still am; but I consider it a much lesser priority than I used to.  What these people lust for isn’t power, it’s fame.  To get their seats, they all pander to whatever constituency or TV camera or media outlet that will get and keep them there.  If one leaves Congress, s/he will simply be replaced by another with the same yearning.

I don’t know how we recover a Congress with [you fill in whatever body part you consider most symbolic of inner strength].  Because in fact, our Congress is simply a reflection of what we’ve become.  

Our Congress is us.

A Greenland Checkmate – If NATO Nations Stand Fast:  a Postscript and Correction

Yesterday, it appeared that President Donald Trump and the NATO nations aligned against him over his attempts to extort Denmark, Greenland, and NATO into transferring control of Greenland to the United States were taking steps to move back from the brink of war.  Mr. Trump at one point apparently indicated that he would not attempt to use force to take control of Greenland.  Whether our Manchild President stepped back from the brink because the NATO nations found a way to placate Mr. Trump, as he claimed, or because somebody woke him up sufficiently to the possibility, as suggested in this post, that the conflict that would ensue if he ordered a military invasion of Greenland could effectively spell the end of his presidency, it does not appear – at least as this is typed – that the United States and its putative NATO allies are headed for any immediate armed conflict.

But who knows what the case will be by the time you read this?  We’ll have to see what happens today.  And then tomorrow.  And then the next day.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that the Regime’s ICE has started new operations in the state of Maine, targeting immigrants from Somalia.  Here we go again.

On a different note, I observed here recently that I very much enjoy receiving comments – even ones pointing out that I have erred in a post.  😊  I was informed yesterday by an unimpeachable source that I had erred in this original note when I casually referred to Greenland as a “colony” of Denmark.  Greenland is not a Danish colony; it is actually a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, although Denmark handles Greenland’s foreign policy and defense, and Greenland relies heavily on Denmark’s financial support, education and health care.

The record – at least on Greenland’s legal status, and at least in these pages – is now clear.  😊

 Now, let’s brace for today’s rollercoaster ride.