This Used to Be Such a Peaceful Town

 

     Stella: "Some people think because they're stronger, or meaner, that they can push you around. I've seen a lot of that. But it's only true if you let it be. The world is what you make of it."

     Paden: "I like your attitude. But it can be risky." 

     I keep thinking of that snatch of dialogue from the 1985 movie, Silverado. It's a brilliant piece of binary dialogue. Neither Stella's nor Paden's lines would've been very memorable by themselves but together, they give each other power, resonance. Relevance.

     We're seeing that defiant spirit in Minneapolis these days. The risk of standing up to power had cost two 37 year-old Minnesotans their lives. And, still, they refuse to stand down. If you're a dittohead MAGAt who's incapable of thinking for yourself beyond Trump's Truth Social feed, then they're domestic terrorists. However, if you live in the reality-based community, they're heroic patriots.

     When Joe Biden took over the presidency in 2021, he'd inherited a dying war in Afghanistan in which we had just 2500 troops. That's 500 fewer than the number of federal agents in Minnesota these days. It's not quite a standing army, which would have horrified the Founding Fathers who were distrustful of such things, but it does count as an occupation and an invasion.

      The reasons for ICE being in Minneapolis-St. Paul were farcical from the beginning. Because of one low octane right wing vlogger alleging day care fraud carried out by Somalis, Donald Trump, acting purely out of an animus against Rep. Ilhan Omar and Governor Tim Walz, dispatched 2000 ICE and Border Patrol agents. Since Renee Good's murder at the hands of Jonathan Ross, he's added 1000. The Minneapolis Police Department, by contrast, numbers just 600.

     The completely worthless mainstream media still haven't asked the obvious question of why an immigration enforcement body like ICE is even postured to act as if they're investigating day care fraud. If it's federal funds we're talking about, you'd send in the FBI, bring in forensic accountants. Or let Minnesota's law enforcement spearhead the investigation.

     You wouldn't send in thousands of masked shock troops carrying fully automatic machine guns and chemical weapons.

     And you wouldn't use them to murder unarmed civilians. (Yes, Pretti was disarmed just seconds before an ICE agent filled him with 10 bullets).

     One of the many ironies during this illegal occupation is that, according to the Ohio Immigrant Alliance and the Pacific Antifascist Collective, a report they issued just hours ago discovered that 30 or more ICE and Border Patrol agents both past and present have been accused of or prosecuted on a vast raft of charges. They consist of gunpoint sexual assault, child sex trafficking, aggravated assault, robbery, rape, torture, kidnapping, sexual abuse of a minor, and possession, and production of child sexual abuse materials.

     And those are just the ones who have been caught.

     We know for a fact that many of the ICE agents in Minnesota right now are neo Nazi skinheads, people awaiting trial on drug charges and, likelier than not, some January 6 rioters. When ICE and DHS last year put out the cattle call for recruits to help the government purge the nation of brown people, these brain-dead goons saw it as a chance to float up to the mother ship. The $50,000 signing bonus and illusion of complete impunity didn't make it any less attractive.

    And the reality that all too many of us refuse to confront is that our government is actively killing us. Then they smear the dead, lie about their crimes and sneer at their critics. Criminals with homicidal intent, arrogance and institutionalized impunity from an equally criminal junta posing as an actual functional government never promises a good outcome. We saw it in Germany in the heyday of the SA.

     When Trump vowed to be a dictator on day one, 77,000,000 didn't believe him or didn't care or thought that their votes would somehow immunize them from his thrashing around to injure his self-perceived enemies. And now we have a lame duck "president" in the twilight of life and relevance and power who's being reminded daily that he can no longer alter reality to suit his agenda.

     That, too, is not a good combination. And don't be fooled by Trump walking back his prior statements on Minnesota and distancing himself from DHS. Don't be fooled by Trump bemoaning the shooting death of another Minnesota resident. Don't be fooled by his suddenly singing Tim Walz's praises after a phone call. Don't be fooled by his criticisms of ICE. He doesn't care about Renee Good or Alex Pretti any more than he cares about anyone not named Donald Trump. That guy only looks at events in his orbit through the lenses of poll numbers and ratings. This makes him look bad. And he can't have that.

     So, for the second time in five and a half years, Minneapolis looks like a war zone, with tear gas replacing what used to be the pristine air of Minnesota, with barricades made of dumpsters blocking city streets, a populace enraged over the violation of their sovereignty and civil rights, their very right to life.

    Or, as Brian Dennehy's character Cobb bemoaned in Silverado, "This used to be such a peaceful town."

Not a Pretti Sight

      In 1984, George Orwell once famously wrote, "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."

      Every minute of every day since January 20th last year, we the people have been afflicted by a shamelessly criminal, murderous regime that regards Orwell's novel not as a warning but a guidebook. With the exception of Stephen Miller, a guy who went into public disservice because his puny forearms weren't strong enough to strangle prostitutes, the most Orwellian figure in this criminal junta has been Greg Bovino (R-Munchkinland).

     In an interview with CNN's Dana Bash, Bovino essentially called Americans idiots for not swallowing wholesale his vividly palpable lies about the execution of Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis yesterday. Bash had shown video proof of Bovino's goons disarming Pretti seconds before shooting him. Bovino yelled that CNN didn't have the right to "litigate" a still frame, apparently unable to distinguish a still frame from a video.

     In a video showing the run-up to the murder, Pretti can be seen coming to the aid of a woman who'd been shoved to the ground by ICE thugs. ICE then swarms Pretti and knocks him to the ground. They then disarm him and, once he was on the ground and no longer posed a threat, a coward, or several, shot him 10 times in five seconds. 

     Now, several things ought to be made clear- Pretti was a legal gun owner who had a concealed carry permit, which is legal in the state of Minnesota. The asshole who'd shot him did so in a crowd of his own people, which was why they scattered like roaches when you turn the lights on. At no time did Pretti reach for his gun.

     To hear Bovino and others talk, Pretti was there to "massacre" ICE agents in a crime scene (without specifying or proving what the crime was). But if that was Pretti's agenda, he would've started blasting away at any prick wearing a mask.

     What Bovino is essentially saying is, if you legally have a gun strapped to your hip within sight of an ICE agent, they have the right to shoot you dead. This is part and parcel to the paranoid, murderous regime of Nazi Germany.

     The really amazing part was Bovino's assertion that the ICE agents were the real victims in all this and not the guy lying in the Hennipin County morgue with 10 gunshot wounds in his corpse. In other words, he's playing the Blame the Victim game and reversing the victimhood so it goes to the actual criminals.

     Even though little Greg doesn't like to litigate still pictures, I'd like to show him the lead image and ask him what he makes of it. I'll tell you what I see: Pretti being forced to he ground, his left hand outstretched to break his fall, what's plainly a cell phone in his right. And, right above him, an ICE goon pointing a gun right at his head in a one-handed grip.

     You ask any cop or former cop and they'll tell you there isn't a single thing about that still frame that's correct in law enforcement, including the grip on the gun.

     And yet, these Nazi stooges of Trump are going on TV and essentially telling us we can't believe our lying eyes, that we should believe their cognitive dissonance and not pictures or videos that put the lie to their claims. And Bovino is telling us if we have a gun, whether we legally have them or not, and get anywhere within spitting distance of an ICE raid, expect to get shot and killed.

     This is a fascist junta masquerading as an actual presidential administration that's grown alarmingly comfortable with lying about each and every thing under the sun. And Goddamn the Republican scum in Congress and all these 2A gun nuts on social media for remaining silent during this killing spree.

     And if the Democrats were worth a shit, they'd put that lead picture in every one of their campaign ads this year until Americans get the message. 

"Minnesota Has Had It."

BREAKING: Reports of ICE-involved shooting near Glam Doll Donuts in Minneapolis, Minnesota pic.twitter.com/fAqaAH3JyW

— Rapid Report (@RapidReport2025) January 24, 2026

     Alex Jeffrey Pretti has only been dead for a few hours and his murder already has its own Wikipedia page.  Pretti was an ICU nurse who worked at the local VA hospital. Pretti's murder this morning at 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis is already the third shooting involving ICE in 17 days.

      Two have been fatal and both victims had been US citizens and Minneapolis residents.

 

      Pee Wee German, aka Stephen Miller, couldn't wait to chime in and called Pretti a "domestic terrorist", the catch-all phrase beloved of domestic terrorists to describe people who stand up to domestic terrorism.  The usual lies have started. DHS is now claiming, without evidence, of course, that Pretti had his gun in his hand and threatened agents. The problem with that is the New York Times thoroughly reviewed the video and found that he was holding a cell phone.

     If you look at the video posted above that was taken by a bystander from inside Glam Doll Donuts across the street, Pretti was swarmed by at least seven ICE agents and he was shot 10 times in five seconds by one of them while he was down and surrounded by ICE.

     I hardly see how that's consistent with law enforcement training anywhere outside of ICE's murder mill. And when real law enforcement, the Minneapolis Police, arrived on the scene, DHS tried to block access to the scene and was successfully resisted by Chief Brian O'Hara.

     Gov. Tim Walz has called out the National Guard and Trump is renewing his threats to invoke the Insurrection Act. 

     That's all I have right now. Anything else would be speculative. But rest assured I'll be writing about this in the immediate future.

The Ultimate Mission Creep

     Yesterday, a whistleblower released a memo that's been circulating around DHS and ICE since at least May 12 last year that essentially allows ICE to enter peoples' homes without judicial warrants and to do so on "administrative warrants". The butter-fingered corporate MSM that can always be counted on to drop the ball consistently hasten to add that administrative warrants are not unheard of in immigration operations but that's not what they should be concentrating on.

     What this blatantly illegal memo shows is that DHS, following the guidance of the most blatantly and brazenly lawless administration in history, had made a quiet but unmistakable pivot away from the judiciary. Judicial warrants are, of course, signed off by judges and magistrates. And while, yes, administrative warrants have been used relatively sparingly in the past, this memo masquerading as actual case law seems to wave away most of the guidelines of prior administrative orders.

     This essentially takes power away from immigration judges and magistrates and puts it in the hands of politically-appointed bureaucrats and apparatchiks. This signals not a mere loss of confidence in the judiciary but an open or barely-concealed contempt of it. The few guidelines are as follows: ICE officers cannot seek to gain entry into a house before 6 AM or after 10 PM. They need to give the occupants time to comply. And the officers must identify themselves and state their reason for the removal. That's according to the guidelines of the mysterious I-205 form that has somehow supplanted an actual judicial warrant.

     In fact, the memo states in part,

     "Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose.”

     Buried in that anodyne language is a blithe dismissal of the US Constitution, specifically the 4th Amendment in the Bill of Rights which prohibits the government from illegal search and seizure. In fact, the 4th Amendment reads in full,

     "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

     It's the "probable cause" that's the sticking point. The 4th amendment is sneered at by authoritarian right wingers when they move to invade peoples' homes and offices, especially when they happen to be enemies of Donald Trump. But when they themselves are the targets of such procedures, then you'll note how quickly they cling to the 4th amendment.

     However, we saw none of that due process in evidence when two days ago, ChongLy "Scott" Thao, a US citizen, was pulled from his St. Paul home at gunpoint in frigid weather, wearing nothing but boxer shorts and his grandson's blanket over his shoulders. It was literally and figuratively a chilling spectacle. Thao said they broke through his door, screamed at the family, pointed guns at them and didn't even want to see documentation proving he was a citizen.

     He also said they didn't have a warrant, administrative or otherwise. 

     They released him hours later without, of course, an apology or explanation.

     It's unclear how this related to Somali day care fraud or why ICE is even "investigating" it to begin with. 

     I hardly think this was what the Founding Fathers meant when they referred to "probable cause".

     This is the very definition of mission creep and by that, I don't mean a purported investigation into fraud immediately morphing into wholesale arrests and detentions. I'm talking about the perversion and broadening of federal authority so that csrtoonishly vague "guidelines" in a memo have essentially supplanted judicial review and oversight so that bureaucrats with an agenda can take over the duties of trained jurists who have to obey stringent guidelines.

     We're not very far away from where Nazi Germany was in the 30s and 40s when they broke into peoples' homes and arrested them without legal resistance and restraint.

      And at least it can be said that when the Nazis detained people, they actually read their papers.

President Swiss Cheese Brain

 

     Every year, at forums and summits, Donald Trump is shamelessly inflicted on the rest of the world. It's like a rich family that occasionally lets its deformed child out of the attic and gives it a break from the steady diet of fish heads. "Oh, look, our beautiful little boy has come down from the attic to join us!", they say to the horrified guests who nervously laugh or stare or look away.

     Today, it was Switzerland's turn at the Davos summit.

    Davos is the place where the world's richest psychopaths meet to discuss how they're going to carve up the world like a birthday cake and make themselves money they plainly don't need. In other words, it's the perfect place for Trump, who's added $1.4 billion to his personal wealth since stealing the Oval Office for the second time.

     So, it only stands to reason, since dementia is a degenerative disease that doesn't get any better, that the deformed little boy would step down from the attic and embarrass the family, one that always manages to hide their mortification and convincingly emulate pride. 

   I don't reasonably expect anyone to listen to Trump's usual meandering hour and 11 minutes of drivel (I certainly didn't, since Trump's voice to me is actually more irritating than nails on a blackboard). But by now we can take it as an article of faith that very little of what Trump said at Davos today was factual. The one thing he did say that we can believe is truthful is when he said,

     "There are a couple of people in the room. I can't stand them...  I would screw them if I could, but I can't do it, right? I can't do it. I would have had a chance, or I could just take them and say, you can't do what Apple's doing, but you're not allowed to do that, Newt Gingrich, right? We can't do it."

     And the world-eating psychopaths in attendance nervously tittered because they all knew he meant every one of them and quietly muttered things related to the 25th amendment. Because they know Donald Trump is the ultimate misanthrope and that he's older than dirt, has had three dementia exams in the past year and will be pushing up daisies soon enough.

    But for now, they have to listen to him, his sagging, jiggling face the color of an old Oxford shoe, hoarsely droning on and on and on... 

     And, of course, he had to dribble some vitriol out of his foul maw at the UK, France, Germany and several other nations, including Ukraine and Russia (Yes, the stupidest man alive called them "stupid"). At the same time he was insulting virtually every nation on earth, the EU's international trade committee decided to halt negotiations of a deal between the US and the EU over his obsession with Greenland.

     And that doesn't even mention the EU's near-activation of its anti-coercion mechanism that's been called a "trade bazooka". That would essentially close off the US from the 450,000,000 customers that could theoretically purchase goods and services from US companies. And let's not forget that the end game of this scenario could involve the EU cashing in its US bonds. Let's also not forget, the European Union owns 40% of US bonds, a historically rock-solid market. If they cashed in all those US bonds, it would be catastrophic to the bond market.

    That comes out to about eight trillion dollars in bonds and equities. But tell that to a moron who'd bankrupted virtually every company and casino he's ever sullied with his grubby little fingers.

    Then there's Trump's shockingly corrupt Board of Peace (which never even mentions Gaza). This would consist of member nations that would pay a one billion dollar bribe for membership. And even though there would be a board, Trump fully plans on making himself the chairman, subject to a three year term but all final decisions would get to be made by him. Oh, and he could personally name his successor. Imagine a coked-up Donald Trump. Jr. demanding a billion dollars from a President Kamala Harris if she gets elected in 2028.

    As McGill University's professor of political theory, Jacob Levy, rightly said, this would make Trump "king of the world".

    Setting aside for a minute the beyond-risible spectacle of a guy who's bombed seven nations and carried out 622 plane or drone strikes in 2025 alone creating something called a "Peace Board", what the "Board of Peace" also fails to mention in its charter is where, exactly, that billion dollar per nation bribe would end up or how it would be used.

      But considering Trump's infallible instinct for enriching himself, an instinct that even dementia can't blunt, is it a stretch to speculate that all that money would wind up in his pockets?

The King We Should Be Honoring

     As America solemnly celebrated Martin Luther King Jr Day yesterday, there was a little news item that had hardly made a ripple but was perfectly symbolic of this unabashedly racist administration. Donald Trump couldn't cancel the holiday- that would've required an Act of Congress- so he took his petty racism and revenge out the only way he knew how.

     The Department of the Interior quietly announced it was removing free fee days at its national parks on MLK Day. As an additional fuck you to the civil rights movement, Trump also signed an executive order ending the free fee day on Juneteenth, the day when slaves were informed that slavery had ended and that they were free. Then, to put a rotten cherry on top of all that, Trump then replaced MLK's birthday with his own, June 14th.

     The fact that our "president" chose to target a holiday announcing emancipation and Dr. Martin Luther King's federal holiday shows how petty and racist he truly is and always has been. And then, to prove once again how morbidly bloated his ego is, he replaced King's birthday with his own.

     This is the same guy who, over a half a century ago, refused to rent to Black people. HUD had to get involved and force the Trumps to do so after finding out applications for Black applicants were marked with a "C" for "Colored" then weeded out and denied housing based on that.

     This is the same piece of shit who has gone after virtually every Black female member of Congress from Frederica Wilson to Maxine Waters to Jasmine Crockett to Ilhan Omar.

     Speaking as someone with two biracial sons, ergo someone who'd never had the slightest tolerance for racism, words can't describe the loathing I feel for Trump and his racism. I don't have the words and I'm a talented writer who can usually find the words I need to describe how I'm thinking and feeling. This is a "man", for want of a better word, who is single-handedly bending Dr. King's moral arc back toward injustice.

     The damnable thing is that he's succeeding and we're letting him. He's succeeded in making racism cool and fashionable again. If George Wallace ever got elected president in '68 or '72, I don't think we'd see even half the racist shit we're seeing now under Trump.

     The so-called Civil Rights Division of the DOJ under Harmeet Dhillon is now doing literally the exact opposite of what the division was originally intended to do. The names and legacies of Black contributors to American history were immediately and swiftly erased. Public schools receiving federal funding, which is all of them, face the risk of losing said funding if they have the temerity to teach children about the horrors of slavery and that the Civil War was fought over it.

     DEI immediately came under fire as soon as Trump sleazed his way back into the stolen Oval Office thanks to $290,000,000 funneled into his campaign coffers by another racist named Elon Musk. And, of course, Republicans are working overtime to keep Black voters from voting for their candidates of choice. Congressional districts are being redlined by Republican lawmakers, diluting their voting power so much the Republicans are all but assured of only their candidates winning.

     This is all at the behest of one man who'd promised us on the campaign trail in 2024 that he'd be a dictator on Day One. What many of us didn't realize was that he'd become a dictator on Day One, not that he'd be a dictator just on Day One. He's acting just like a king and now, with his move to grab Greenland, he's acting more like an emperor than a king.

     Trump plainly is not the King we should be honoring and those of us who are dialed in and seeing what's really going on are now worrying if there will be a United States to salvage when Trump finally goes away for good.

Greetings From Whiteland!

 

During one of my frequent satellite phone calls with President Trump, my old friend made a shockingly brilliant observation. 

     "Cyril, did you ever notice that Greenland is white and Iceland is green? That's why I'm signing an Executive Order renaming Greenland Whiteland. My base will love it. The polar bears will love it. If Denmark doesn't like it, fuck 'em. That's false advertising!"

     My mouth gaped open and shut several times and thought of Trump University but chose not to say anything. Otherwise, the president's plan to rename the world's largest island sounded somewhat sane if you looked at it from a tortured but friendly perspective. After all, he renamed the Kennedy Center after himself and the Gulf of America has taken the world by storm. 

     Of course, my job here as S.C.A.M., or Secretary of Coercive Acquisition of Minerals, is my remit and I'm happy to help the president suck every last molecule of rare earth minerals from this beautiful land and to hell with what the liberal pinheads of the EU say!

      

     Of course, a nice surprise was when my baby girl, Bertha, showed up on a cargo plane here at Nuuk. Needless to say, the men on the airstrip were somewhat taken aback when Bertha began taking the cargo off the plane without the aid of a forklift. Bertha said she decided to join me and her uncle Cecil here because she heard a rumor on a women's weightlifting dating site that AMC, acting on the president's rather obsessive initiatives, may greenlight a delayed second season of Lady Ice Road Truckers of Alaska, only set in Greenland.

     Of course, there aren't any Peterbilt or Mack trucks here hauling freight, much less by lady ice road truckers, but my baby girl has always been an optimistic sort. So Bertha has been poking around Nuuk, looking for other female enthusiasts of the show, even though she's been frustrated in distinguishing the men from the women since everyone here looks like the Michelin Man.

 

    Meanwhile, Cecil has been busy learning Danish and teaching himself choice phrases learned by every tourist, such as, "Do you have a boyfriend, son?" and "Don't tell your parents."

     The main stumbling block to doing my job is the Danish government's inability to find a counterpart for me to work with. The closest thing they could find was a Three Card Monte dealer from Arhus they had to spring from prison. His name is Lars and I've already lost $500 to him.

     Still, even though the challenge of extracting the minerals from this unforgiving climate is daunting, our father Ambrose would be so proud of me. I remember after his glorious quarter term in Congress, Dad had bought a controlling interest in a uranium mine in Alaska in 1961. Back then, our nuclear arsenal was powered by uranium and America was desperate to find fresh sources of it.

    Things were going swimmingly until the Eskimo miners started glowing green in the dark. There were the usual liberal lawsuits and Dad's consortium had to settle out of court so that was the end of his foray into uranium mining. 

     So, while the work is challenging, at least my whole family is here and we're already personalizing the Ambassador's residence/weather shack. Bertha's already been putting up posters of Melissa Etheridge and kd lang and Cecil has been putting up posters of Hanson (before most of them were of the age of consent).

     And, to show his support for my remit, President Trump has already sent me a golden shovel to use for the inevitable ground-breaking ceremony. The problem is, at this time of year, the ground here in Greenland is like an iron plate so I may have to get Bertha involved. Or maybe the military troops that are streaming here in increasing numbers from all over Europe can pitch in.

Meet the New Ambassador to Greenland

 

Well, technically, I'm not the ambassador to Greenland because we still don't have one. However, we have a special envoy: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, a man most famous for his petroleum-based chicken gumbo recipe and banning same sex marriage among crawfish. However, President Trump has seen fit to make my most fervent dream come true: a job in his fabled administration (And, let's face it, everything that's come out of the White House this past year has been a fable or another).

    So imagine the look on my face when I got a phone call from President Trump yesterday in my Manhattan office announcing he was creating a new position just for yours truly.

      "Cyril, I've created a new office just for you: Secretary of Coercive Annexation of Minerals."

     After telling the president that spelled out S.C.A.M., he said, "I know it does. That's why I love it so much. Lutnick thought of it but I'm grabbing credit for it."

     So I'm writing this beside a lantern that burns whale blubber in the capital of Nuuk, which just makes President Trump love this place even more because it reminds him of the word "nuke". Not far away is my baby brother, Cecil, who's mumbling Justin Bieber lyrics and tossing and turning on a cot here in the Ambassador's residence (at least that's what the locals call it while seeming to laugh up their fur-lined sleeves), which used to serve as a weather observation shack.

 

    Occasionally, poor Cecil murmurs, "Oh, Justin, why did you have to get married?" before falling back asleep. Poor boy. It's been an adjustment for him.

     So, the president outlined for me what I needed to do as S.C.A.M., namely getting Greenland to let us have their minerals. So I said this to the Eskimos, who kept telling they aren't Eskimos, even though I know better. They insisted the extraction of the minerals was extremely difficult if not outright impossible because of the permafrost of the terrain, otherwise it would've been done already.

     They also said building the infrastructure would cost billions. Perhaps I spoke out of turn when I said we could afford that because when I conveyed this to the president via satellite phone (the only way to reach America from here aside from nuclear-powered homing pigeons), the president erupted over the phone.

     "Cyril," he said, "no one knows infrastructure better than me. After all, I used to talk about it all the time whenever a scandal was brewing. And, with the help of Polish laborers, I built Trump Tower for just under $1000."

     "Mr. President," I said, "I think building mineral extraction infrastructure is different than adding a few stories onto an existing tower."

     The conversation kind of went downhill from that point on, with the president calling my brother a boy diddler who cavorted with Jeffrey Epstein at Mar a Lago.

    As for our special envoy, he hasn't been to Greenland, yet, even though the governor plans on attending a dog sled race sometime in March, which Gov. Landry insists will automatically make him an expert in all matters Greenlandic. No doubt, he will make a great addition to our team.

     By way of ensuring success for our mission, the president had sent his namesake, Donald Trump, Jr., to Greenland to hand out plastic tubes of his branded styling gel ("A Little Don Will Do You") that the natives use to grease the bottoms of their sleds, which seems to work quite well.

     All things considered, we're making the transition to Greenlandic life quite well, even though a horny walrus keeps sneaking into the Ambassador's mansion/weather observation shack and pinning Cecil and me under its bulk.

Top 10 Items in Machado's Swag Bag

      On January 15, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado gave Donald Trump her Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to her last year. The plaque in which the medal was encased read, "To President Donald J. Trump, In Gratitude for Your Extraordinary Leadership in Promoting Peace Through Strength, Advancing Diplomacy, and Defending Liberty and Prosperity." Ms. Machado left the White House with a swag bag with Trump's signature in gold. What were the top 10 items in Ms. Machado's swag bag?

10) The Epstein files.

9) A couple of red hats embossed with "Make Venezuela Great Again Or Else."

8) 100 shares for Trump Oil written in Sharpie.

7) A photostat of the cognitive test proving Trump correctly identified his own wife and a walrus.

6) The only gold Trump Phone in existence, with tracking software.

5) 30 year-old bags of peanuts from Trump Airlines.

4) An advance copy of Trump's autobiography, entitled, "I Won 2020 By a Lot".

3) Melania Trump's CD of Christmas songs, including, "Who Gives Fuck About Christmas?", "I Saw Daddy Kissing Karoline Leavitt" and "All I Want For Christmas is Fucking Renegotiated Prenup".

2) Aborted blueprints for the Trump Ballroom, including an underground bunker with jail cells for Ilhan Omar, AOC and Barack Obama.

1) Draft of new Venezuelan constitution that starts out with, "I Won 2020 By a Lot". 

Trump is Pimpsticking Americans

     I've asked this question at least once before and I have to ask it again:

     Where's the red line? Where's the fucking Rubicon? Does it even exist, anymore?

     Donald Trump threatening a 10% tariff on eight of our best allies, including the UK, unless they heel to and let him grab Greenland which would be, or should be, blatantly illegal. Congress has had no input whatsoever on Trump's power grab and imposing tariffs on virtually every nation on earth. It used to be that Congress and Congress alone (and, according to the Constitution, any revenue-generating bill has to originate in the House) controlled tariffs.

     But no one had taken Trump aside (at least not successfully) and explained to him how tariffs work, that raising them on foreign imports just means higher costs for American companies and consumers. Trump actually knows this. This was why, after his ridiculously high tariffs on China, Trump thought he could order Walmart to "eat the tariffs", which of course was ignored and maybe even privately ridiculed by Walmart executives.

     And the tariffs are going to increase to 25% by June 1st if the European Union still won't let him have Greenland, even though it's not their call. 

     But according to psycho morons like Stephen Miller, who are bound and determined to give their senile king whatever he wants, might makes right and we have every right to seize Greenland because Denmark is a smaller nation and is supposedly incapable of defending it.

     That's Gilded Age thinking. Because the aforementioned psycho morons like Miller and Trump seem to forget that NATO exists. And, as Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, if we try to take Greenland by force, the other 31 nations, because of Article 5, will have no choice but to defend it against the United States, which would essentially be the end of NATO. Geopolitics is always a very complex thing but that's what it boils down to.

     This is essentially why several NATO nations, including the Netherlands and Germany, are in Greenland right now. They're beginning the first stages of safeguarding the island.

      Trump's insistence on annexing Greenland, against its and Denmark's will, and that of every NATO country, is supposedly about "national security". But Greenland, the Kingdom of Denmark and NATO already said we could put as many bases as we want there. Security is not the issue. And invading Greenland with ground troops will result in the exact opposite of safeguarding our national security. We're good but fighting 31 nations, some of them having nuclear stockpiles, is ridiculous.

     Trump just wants to annex Greenland because of its untapped mineral resources just like he made no bones about invading Venezuela over its vast oil reserves. Our very stable genius is rapidly putting us in the position of being attacked by every nation in NATO, which, obviously, would be a first. 

     And, by using mob extortion methods to try to get his way, he's planning on making it harder for Americans to make ends meet. Because Trump doesn't care about you. Never did, never will. He plainly has imperialist ambitions and thinks he can invade, bomb, colonize or otherwise subjugate every nation that has something he wants.

     This is precisely how madmen think and it's past time we do something about him.

Good Times at Pottersville

 

 

Minnesota is an Occupied War Zone

Shawn Jackson’s kids were taken by first responders to the hospital from the scene. He said he was trying to leave his relative’s house when a flash bang detonated his airbags and tear gas filled his car pic.twitter.com/clGdMl8sYu

— Max Nesterak (@maxnesterak) January 15, 2026

     And if the utterly worthless wet-legged corporate cunts of the mainstream media had any interest at all in doing its job, I wouldn't be the only one saying this.

     In the span of just over a week, ICE had a) shot an innocent mother in the face and killed her for doing absolutely nothing wrong, b) shot a man in the leg and c) firing tear gas canisters into and flash bang grenades under a car filled with six kids, necessitating a six month-old infant to be given CPR when it stopped breathing.

      And now, in the face of resistance, the guy who refused to call out the national guard to quell his own riot, is threatening to use the Insurrection Act, something that hasn't been invoked in 34 years. After the murder of Renee Good, the DoJ completely froze Minnesota law enforcement authorities out of any investigation, including sharing any evidence whatsoever with them. But the federal government is vowing to do its usual opaque internal investigation, thank God.

      But what no one seems to be asking is why ICE, an Immigration enforcement body, is supposedly investigating fraud. Sending poorly-trained ICE goons who can barely tie their jackboots into Minneapolis-St. Paul is proof right there that it was never about fraud. It's just a pretext to round up Somalis because Trump loathes Ilhan Omar and Tim Walz.

     Minnesota is now afflicted with 3000 ICE agents, 1000 more that he'd originally surged into it. It's no coincidence that ICE agents have been swarming just Democratic-run cities that just happen to have Democratic governors. Now Trump and his enablers are openly floating the idea of arresting these Democratic governors and mayors, without, of course, specifying charges.

     And what's going on in Minnesota is the very definition of mission creep. The world has never seen anything this since the earliest days of Nazi Germany when political dissidents were rounded up and thrown into concentration camps in which anyone not loyal to the one party allowed to exist was akin to a threat to national security.

     And look what that morphed into by the 1940s.

     The clusterfuck in LA was just an abortive dress rehearsal. That was Trump probing to see how much he could get away with. Like the toddler he is, he keeps pushing boundaries, tolerance until. before you know it, he's talking about annexing Greenland and Canada. Hitler didn't stop with Austria. Two years later, he moved on to France then Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands.

     It was all part of the plan.

     LA. Portland. Those were mere dress rehearsals for a play that never should've been written. Minnesota is Trump showing the rest of the nation how he feels about it. Blue states and cities now. 

     But it's only a matter of time before he starts moving on to red states. 

Why Aren't We More Alarmed?

     As my 67th birthday approaches in four days, I'm among that baby boomer generation that remembers what America used to be, what it used to represent, or purported to. I came of age in the late 70s, where a kid making minimum wage (In 1978, $3.05 per hour) could at least get himself a room in a rooming house and spend just 25% of his income on rent. We were told that, in the decades to come, your Social Security benefits would be there waiting for you.

    We were told if we lived within our means, we'd be OK. Having a credit card was optional.and what the hell were credit ratings? If you got a job with the right company, you could retire in 20 years with a pension to supplement your Social Security. The late 70s was the turning point in US history when a sole breadwinner could support the family. 

     We were told in the twilight of that compact between Big Business and labor that if you worked hard and applied yourself, you'd be able to afford a mortgage, put a kid or two through college, maybe buy a new car every few years. Leave it to Beaver went off the air a long time ago, but many of us still bought into that bullshit even as it was being undermined.

     Then Reagan came along and everything started going to shit.

     Fast forward nearly half a century later and we baby boomers don't recognize our own country anymore, or at least what used to be our country.

    Thanks to corrupt Republicans, everything is owned by corporations and they're essentially allowed to do whatever they wish to us. What few of us have or had pensions saw them evaporate on Wall Street (Remember Enron?). And when those necktied psychopaths caused a crash on Wall Street, the government acted swiftly, alright- 

     It rammed through Congress a bailout package rewarding said psychopaths with $700,000,000,000 of our money for their horrible behavior while their victims were left to twist in the wind. (Iceland, on the other hand, after their brief flirtation with banking deregulation, did the exact opposite: They jailed the bankers and baled out their people).

     Then, nearly 21 years after Reagan got elected, our nation was attacked on three fronts. Nearly 2900 humans perished and we rallied together as a nation. Other nations ran to our side. Less than 20 years after that, we railed against nonexistent vaccine mandates, refused to socially distance or wear "diapers" on our faces. Rather than take safe vaccines, we put poison into our bodies. The people that gladly turned over their liberties to a corrupt moron were enraged over non legally-binding guidelines from health professionals.

      All that was, of course, caused by one man, if the word can accurately describe him. Ever since he came down that gaudy gold escalator, the United States' worst elements have come scrambling out of the woodwork. Suddenly, racism and neo Nazism were cool again. Nativism became de rigueur. We once again found our inner sadists because we got validation from one man in the Oval Office. Thousands of them attacked the Capitol and police officers and, a year ago, they were almost all pardoned by the guy who'd started the riot.

     In the last year, we've played witness to a level of cruelty and corruption that has become literally cartoonish, as has what now passes for our foreign policy and military postures. In contravention of seemingly every international law, treaty and alliance, that man has already invaded a sovereign nation and kidnapped its head of state.

     He's now rattling his saber at Iran, Cuba, Greenland. World leaders, including Denmark's Prime Minister and other geopolitical experts are saying that if Trump takes over Greenland, it'll be the end of NATO and they're right. Of course, that will be exactly what Putin wants because the NATO alliance and its Article 5 is the only thing keeping Putin from invading Western Europe.

     But we're nominally led by a clown who's in unceasing service to Putin, a guy who'd also invaded a sovereign nation, a turn of events that would've seemed impossible just a decade ago.

     Our government is now murdering unarmed mothers and threatening to do so again. Our fraudulent vice president is even now threatening door-to-door searches by immigration authorities that are straight out of the Gestapo and Orwell's 1984. Anyone with skin as brown as a paper bag are getting arrested at their jobs, in parking lots, picking their kids up from school. The government is doing their best to revoke citizenships in violation of the 14th amendment and visas.

     When did this become normal, much less legal?

     Why should it be?

     Mass protests in the wake of murders of people like George Floyd and Renee Good are all good and well but they have a very poor track record for efficacy. We'd like to emulate that of the Arab Spring but our system isn't cut out for overthrowing dictators and tyrants like the one afflicting us now.

     We keep comforting ourselves that this November's midterms will fix everything, that we'll throw the bums out. But the fact is, while Congress is saddled with approval ratings in the low double digits, every two years we wind up re-electing 85% of Congress. And what realistic hope is there for effecting change when Congress has already abdicated its Article One powers and autonomy to a rancid branch of government and its perverted Article Two powers?

     I have no solutions, no influence, no power. I'm just another voice howling distantly in the wilderness. But there is something very, very wrong with this country that's acting more and more with each day like a bloated banana republic with nukes.

     I realize that the late 70s aren't coming back. I realize that change is inevitable. But it's become utterly impossible to see how any of the changes we've seen just in the last year are making us great again.

Where Goes Pittsburgh So Goes the Nation

 

     This past week, I'd published a novel entitled Ink and Iron about a young, crusading journalist in 1919 Boston. As a historical novelist, it was right in my wheelhouse. For the fourth time, I'd written a novel about real-life historical events as the backdrop (the others being Tatterdemalion, Gods of Our Fathers and the recent The Final Bullet). 

     In creating Moira Delmonico, that young, crusading journalist for the post WW I Boston Globe, I was able to reacquaint myself with what I've learned about print media since getting into blogging in early 2005 (Yes, I've been doing this for 21 years, which, I guess, makes me the IF Stone of blogging). But not only is Moira an engaging character, one certainly capable of supporting a feature-length novel, but in doing so I was able to reacquaint myself with old school journalism standards that seem almost quaint today. My research into print journalism in 1919 America also reacquainted me with the importance of newspapers then and now.

     In the days of the Boston Police Strike in late summer 1919, newspapers were king. Obviously, there was no radio, no television, no internet. And a cub reporter like Moira working for a large newspaper like the Boston Globe, which then had a circulation of about 115,000 was, if not sitting in the catbird seat, certainly had a bright future if their talent and ethics were up to the task.

     In Ink and Iron, Moira gets several articles either shot down or is forced to rewrite them because of warnings from the legal department. This was not to show her as a reckless yellow journalist nor the Globe's legal staff as the bad guys. At the center of the book was the tension between Moira's factual stories and the lawyers' insistence that publishing her pieces could land them in court fighting a libel suit. The Supreme Court had already issued more than one decision prior to 1919 that libel was not protected under the first amendment.

     Much of the book consists of external and internal dialogues with Moira wrestling with the stringent ethics of her profession. The old chestnuts of journalism were faithfully trotted out: "It's not what you know but what you can prove." "Don't become the story." "Triple source everything." "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." "Journalism is history's first draft", etc.

     In 1919, people got their news from newspapers and that was it. Everything else was rumor and conjecture. There was an implicit trust between the reading public and print media. They just trusted that what they were reading was factual and not tainted by bias or agendas.

     Sadly, that day has long since passed. Some of the bigger papers have been bought up by billionaires (As opposed to Adolph Ochs, who, in the 19th century, bought the New York Times with virtually no money and a pack of lies). Others, like Charles Taylor, who bought the Globe shortly after its founding and who makes two appearances in my book, were wealthy, yes, but they had an intuitive grasp of the importance and the necessity of print journalism. 

     As we all know, a free press is indispensable to a democratic republic. Removing an ethical and responsible Fourth Estate pollutes, warps and corrupts a media ecosystem and, without that all-important bulwark of said media, it has a deleterious ripple effect across the land. Corruption is all but inevitable.

     That's why it was so alarming to me to read that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was shuttering its operations on May 3, 2026. This is alarming because the Post-Gazette is one of the oldest newspapers in America, it being founded in 1786, the year before the US Constitution was signed. It predates venerable institutions like the New York Times and Washington Post by generations.

     It was by far the largest newspaper in western Pennsylvania and had survived when literally thousands of other newspapers had failed since the 18th century. Then its staff went on a three year-long strike when they demanded better wages and benefits. The Supreme Court had ruled against the paper. The paper's ownership, Block Communications, then decided that closing down for good was the only viable option. As far as I know, they never made the slightest attempt to even sell it. Just days ago, Block Communications also shut down the Pittsburgh City Paper, an alt-weekly.

     These closures will obviously leave a massive media desert in western Pennsylvania.

     Just to play Devil's Advocate for a moment, in terms of profitability and influence, newspapers have been in serious decline for the last two or three decades. But your larger newspapers are invariably corporate entities run by executives and bean-counters, bottom-line-driven types with MBAs who have no real allegiance to or appreciation of the media. And if they feel they need to lay people off, they will do so without paying much, if any, heed to the effects on the media ecosystem. Their only focus is maintaining a certain profit margin, not in ensuring the media's role in holding peoples' feet to the fire or informing the public about they need to know.

     Over the last quarter century, America has lost about 40% of its local papers and 75% of those jobs have been lost. Local news just doesn't sell, any more, and the shrinking pool is increasingly leaving us with nationally-focused outlets like the Times, the Post and USA Today.

     Former House Speaker Tip O'Neil once famously observed that "all politics is local" and the same ought to apply to journalism to some degree. People ought to be interested in what's happening in their own communities for the simple reason that it often directly affects their lives.

     Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack did a study in 2002 showing that back then, there were 40 journalists per 100,000 people. Today, it's down to eight.

     And when large local papers like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette close down, it results in fewer people voting. An uninformed populace is an incurious and disengaged one. And, as history has shown us time and again, in the absence of actual news, the corrupt and unscrupulous will move in, resulting in propaganda mills and "pink slime" sites. Often, these are online outlets and not print publications but those who still wish to stay engaged and informed will gladly flock to these sites to get what passes for news.

     But, as Caleb Carr warned us 26 years ago in Killing Time, "Information is not necessarily knowledge".

     I'd love to think that newspapers will endure despite current trends in reader tastes and Protean technology and business models. I'd also love to think that local news will endure but that will require a patchwork, collective effort at the local, grassroots level. And newspapers have always danced on that high wire, that balancing act that pits profitability and viability versus its very necessity in a free republic. 

     And there's no viable substitute for a free and independent press. 

Kicking Renee Good After She's Dead

BREAKING: Alpha News has obtained cellphone footage showing perspective of federal agent at center of ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis pic.twitter.com/p2wks0zew0

— Alpha News (@AlphaNews) January 9, 2026

     Renee Macklin Good was not rich. She wasn't an "influencer" with a following of millions. She wasn't a powerful Democratic elected official like Jacob Frey or Tim Walz. She wasn't an "antifa terrorist". She was just a suburban mom who'd just, as with many other moms in Minneapolis that day, dropped her child off at school.

     In other words, she was no threat to the Trump administration, the MAGA movement or DHS.

     Not that that would've justified a death sentence under any circumstances. After all, this isn't Baghdad from 20 years ago.

     The Trump administration reacted swiftly. Within the hour, Trump, Noem and JD Bowman began accusing her of "weaponizing her vehicle", that the ICE agent was "lucky to be alive" And, just hours ago, Bowman had the nerve to put this out on Twitter:

     "Watch this, as hard as it is. Many of you have been told this law enforcement officer wasn't hit by a car, wasn't being harassed, and murdered an innocent woman. The reality is that his life was endangered and he fired in self defense."

     What our so-called vice president was  referring to was a leaked cell phone video taken by the same asshole, Jonathan Ross, who murdered Good. It shows a smiling Renee Good momentarily taking a stand against the goons who'd infested that neighborhood, her neighborhood, perhaps the only form of protest she'd ever engaged in in her short life.

     God only knows why Jonathan Ross was filming Good on his cell phone. At best, he was supposed to be participating in an immigration raid, not filming a podcast or a Youtube video. But JD Bowman, like most Republicans and the MAGATs who worship them and their every cruelty, lives on Earth 2. We saw this during the George Floyd protests of 2020 that also started in Minneapolis. They've historically forced themselves to disbelieve the evidence shown to them on videotape and to see something completely different from the truth.

     But, if anything, Ross' cell phone video only confirmed what we on Earth 1 already knew: That Renee Macklin Good was summarily executed on a city street without any legal justification whatsoever. It shows Good smiling at Ross and saying, "Don't worry, I'm not mad at you," in the final moments of her life.

     Seconds later, a group of enraged ICE agents swarmed her car, screamed "Get the fuck out of the car!" and reached for her door handle. Like anyone in that predicament would do, she tried to flee the scene. Then Ross dropped his phone and fired three shots into her face through her driver side window. Then moments after she was dead, Ross could be heard muttering, "Fucking bitch."

     I won't belabor the point that shooting at a moving vehicle runs counter to law enforcement training all over the country. I won't try to make hay over the incredibly unprofessional conduct of the ICE goons at the scene. This is about a criminal organization that has essentially legalized summary execution after even mild, momentary rebellion. That's what banana republics do, plain and simple.

     It was the speed and casualness with which Trump and his top enablers vilified Renee Good, essentially kicking her not just when she was down but dead and incapable of defending herself. And this intolerance toward the most cursory opposition from even the least powerful among us is part and parcel to every authoritarian regime ever. It stems from a paranoia of the people rising up against them and openly questioning their will, their supposed mandate.

     And the fact that Good was a woman seems to fuel their vitriol. Kristi Noem has already sexualized this murder, repeatedly using female pronouns as if her being a disobedient woman justified a death sentence. And all this cruelty and barbarity that we've seen for the past year is at the behest of a rapist and misogynist who'd referred to women in the past a "dogs", "pigs" and "disgusting animals".

     And this murderous administration will double, triple, quadruple, quintuple down and stick by its lies and warped, mangled version of reality rather than admit they were wrong, which in itself is a form of sociopathy. We saw it during the ongoing persecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the fishermen in the Caribbean who were blown out of the water during Trump's two dozen strikes. They will murder innocent people, powerless people then, when the outcry gets to be too great, Trump and his goons will then savage these dead, dismembered people and will try their best to get you to believe they were the worst people on earth.

     Decency and honesty are considered weaknesses, character flaws, even heresy impeding the holy mandate.

     Renee turned away from Ross just as she was putting the car in drive. Every angle of every video that's ever been released plainly shows that. It's not as if a new video from a new angle is ever going to come to light showing Good striking Ross with her Honda Pilot and trying to run him over. Ross never even got any dirt from her car on his uniform. There was no contact, no nothing.

     And he shot her in the face several times when she used her fight or flight instinct. She chose flight. Ross chose fight.

     That's it, Case closed. Now all that remains is for Keith Ellison, Minnesota's Attorney General, to empanel a grand jury and have this asshole indicted for murder.

 

     The pathological alternate reality is on full display on Elon Musk's neo Nazi sewer formerly known as Twitter. Every totalitarian regime has citizens who will believe whatever their Dear Leader and his enablers will tell them. That especially goes for cop groupies and other law enforcement fetishists. Yes, these people who'd attacked DC police on January 6th 2021 back the blue as long as the right people are getting murdered and brutalized. 

     But I'd like to close this by reminding them that these cruel and stupid stormtroopers getting shat out by ICE's training mill won't give a shit what you wrote in support of them on social media. They wouldn't hesitate to shoot you in the face if you just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in an abruptly developing and highly-fluid situation.

     They will shoot you, too, in the face, the minute they perceive you to be a threat in their PTSD minds. The administration will then kick you when you're dead and accuse you of all sorts of vile things. Because protecting the mission with people like this always means more than protecting innocent civilian lives.

     You're playing with a flared cobra and it will bite with frightening speed anyone who gets near its basket.