unraveling

New Year's Eve.2025

That's a wrap (part 3: Sworn in at midnight)

There's plain old "midnight," as the middle of the night, and then there's "midnight," in particular, the start of a new day. The next midnight coming will be the start of a new year, as well. (Before I noticed the dateline, I imagined the following story was still to come; The Guardian makes it sound like it already happened, but I think they're wrong about that.)

Midnight tomorrow (as best I can tell), there's to be "an underground midnight private ceremony," New York's mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, becoming His Honor, the Mayor, with New York Attorney General Letitia James swearing him in. The Guardian told us yesterday:

"Mamdani, 34, plans to take the oath of office on New Year’s Eve in a disused subway station beneath city hall that acts as turnaround for the local 5 train. The unusual choice of venue for the ceremony, Mamdani said, is symbolically resonant of the “inauguration of a new era”.

“It was a physical monument to a city that dared to be both beautiful and build great things that would transform working peoples’ lives,” Mamdani said in a statement.

“That ambition need not be a memory confined only to our past, nor must it be isolated only to the tunnels beneath city hall: it will be the purpose of the administration fortunate enough to serve New Yorkers from the building above.”

The station was decommissioned in 1945, designated a NY city landmark in 1979, and put on the National Register of Historical Places in 2004. Michael Freeman's photo suggests it's still quite beautiful (freshly scrubbed for tonight?). Do click to expand to the big version on the Guardian's site.

Of course, a private ceremony could not be enough. "Later on Wednesday," the Guardian says, but probably Thursday, there's "a follow-up ceremony on the steps of city hall," "where he will be 'sworn in' by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, followed by a block party up Broadway," covered in one of 5 NYT tabs for its N.Y.C.'s Mayor-Elect coverage. That article is dated Dec. 21, and says the swearing-in will be "around midnight on Jan. 1" and the party "later that day," now tomorrow, Thursday.

Says there will be "4,000 tickets for the event at City Hall," which would make that tightly curved subway station pretty crowded. "The neighboring party will be able to accommodate another 40,000 spectators, who will be able to watch the proceedings on large screens." I'm imagining there may be more than 40,000 folks out for the block party, hmm?

That's a wrap (part 2: Due Process)

In re Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who deserves a special edition for the hell he's gone through this year, after having the misfortunate to be wrongly swept up in Stephen Miller's anti-immigration domestic terror campaign, and to stay in the headlines despite being illegally deported to El Savador and its infamous CECOT prison.

He does already have a special edition page on Wikipedia, flagged for its "contain[ing] an excessive amount of intricate detail that may only interest a particular audience." The story includes the highest court in our land ruling—unanimously—that the government must "facilitate" his return to the US. (The ambiguity of that verb led the Trump administration to imagine "it was not obligated to seek his release, and it was up to El Savador to release him." Outrageously.

Our informant for this close-of-the-year wrap comes from Joyce Vance and her Civil Discourse blog: Unsealed: Abrego Garcia. What has been unsealed is the US District Court's Memorandum Opinion and Order regarding Abrego Garcia's motion to compel discovery relevant to his motion to dismiss for vindictiveness and selective prosecution, and the government's motion to quash subpoenas for DAG Todd Blanche; Aakash Singh, a lawyer in his office; and Trump 2.0's initial acting Attorney General and now chief administrative hearing officer in the DOJ, James Ridley McHenry III.

The judge granted discovery on a subset of some 3,000 documents relevant to the question of whether the government's prosecution "was tainted by improper motivation," and asked for "additional briefing" on the government's motion to prevent Blanche and his underlings from having to testify.

Vance includes a six-item timeline of the criminal prosecution (and stuff), starting with Abrego Garcia being "deported on March 15, 2025 (despite the existence of an order that prohibited it)," through to him being indicted on May 21, while he was still in CECOT. (The government brought him back to the US on June 6.)

"These developments are all phrased in the polite language used in courts by judges and lawyers, but they are jaw dropping. The government represented to the court that the decision to prosecute Abrego Garcia was made locally, disconnected from his effort to enforce his constitutional rights and challenge his deportation. Their own emails appear to contradict that assertion. The government will still have the opportunity to come forward and explain away the presumption of vindictiveness. I’ve seen a number of cases during my 25 years at DOJ where a defendant argued vindictiveness. In every case, the government explained why the prosecution was legitimate, and in every case, it prevailed. I’ve never seen a case where the government made representations to a judge that were refuted by its own internal communications. It’s exceptionally unusual for prosecutors to have to take the witness stand to defend their own conduct. But Abrego Garcia’s case, which has been highly irregular from the start, may well be the one where that happens."

The New York Times has a longer recounting of Key Events in the Administration’s Pursuit of Abrego Garcia. "[T]he Justice Department has spent countless hours and untold sums of money pursuing a single immigrant." Alan Feuer and/or whoever edited the piece refers to the (apparently) malicious, and vindictive case as comprising "numerous slip-ups" and "missteps," as if it were light comedy. With my emphasis added:

March 15: Mr. Abrego Garcia is deported to El Salvador without any opportunity to challenge his removal in the courts. Even though the Trump administration ultimately acknowledges that his expulsion was an “administrative error,” violating a previous court order that expressly barred him from being sent back to his homeland, he is housed in a notorious prison built for terrorists.

It was a mistake. Followed by retribution against him for being the target of their mistake. The obscenity continued, complete with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador in the Oval Office with President Trump on April 14, when "top Trump officials, along with Bukele" made it "clear that they have no intention of returning Mr. Abrego Garcia, whom they call a terrorist, to the United States."

That's a wrap (part 1)

Time to sum up the year, eh? What a year it has been. In politics, I'll take advantage of my favorite daily historian, Heather Cox Richardson and just quote the opening graf from her Dec. 30, 2025 letter, out overnight:

"The hallmark of the first year of President Donald J. Trump’s second term has been the attempt of the president and his cronies to dismantle the constitutional system set up by the framers of that document when they established the United States of America. It’s not simply that they have broken the laws. They have acted as if the laws, and the Constitution that underpins them, don’t exist."

There's a lot more to be said, of course, and she spells it out, from South African immigrant Elon Musk's declaring "Novus Ordo Seclorum" on his vanity social medium and the DOGE team berzerking the administrative state, freeing everyone's personal data, effectively ending the USAID and facilitating the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and so on.

"Musk and DOGE also established the idea that the unelected officials in the Trump administration could do whatever they wished, without regard to the laws or the Constitution."

Even with a supine majority in both chambers of Congress, and a Supreme Court that has greenlighted its own irrelevance, the lawlessness was accelerated by "emergencies." Nine, she says, in case you lost count, which I certainly did. All of them cocked up. Have we seen such a thing before? Well...

"This reliance on emergencies reflected the ideas of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, whose writings were followed by right-wing leaders, including billionaire Peter Thiel and the man who influenced him, Curtis Yarvin. Schmitt argued that power belongs to the leader who can exploit emergencies that create exceptions to the constitutional order, enabling him to exercise power without regard to the law.

"Trump asserted this view on August 26, claiming “the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger—and it is in danger in these cities—I can do it.” As now–Vice President J.D. Vance described Schmitt’s ideas in 2024: “There’s no law, there’s just power.”

Oh, and remember "ALL YOUR DAYS ARE BELONG TO US"? After Trump used a "trade emergency" to light the fuse on the great tariff war (and its tax hike on consumers) in April, and lawmakers moved to challenge the tariffs, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson "declared the rest of the session a single day with regard to legislation that could challenge Trump’s declaration of an emergency so that a required number of days could not pass before a vote to end that emergency."

Man, that was a long day. Before we even get started on the cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, the roundups of brown people and CECOT in El Salvador, the pardons, the military parade on Demento's birthday, the cuckolding of the Department of Justice, deploying the National Guard to American cities, RFK Jr starting a war on vaccination and the worm in his head telling him to destroy health science, the mysterious disappearance for several days of the Labor Day weekend, after which "the president’s deteriorating health, both physical and mental, was an increasingly major story."

Are we not "roused to defend [our] democracy"? If not yet, my god, what are you waiting for?

28.Dec.2025

The darkest hours

There may be a dawn of accountability coming. God knows we are oversupplied with the deserving. Rebecca Solnit's Feminism Versus Trump and Epstein recounts some of the horrific history, but with recognition of more than halting progress, and with some optimism.

"Trump appears to be disintegrating, rotting, collapsing before our eyes, mentally and physically, and Republicans in Congress – first of all with the vote to release the Epstein files – are breaking from him.... The Epstein files seem to have been his breaking point. Breaking point in the loyalty of so many right-wingers, and maybe a mental breaking point for him. I welcome this breakage. I welcome what belated, flawed, imperfect version of justice may yet come."

Trump was pretty damn rotten to begin with, but as we've seen, there is no bottom. What we already know is bad enough. What remains buried, set upon by a thousand FBI agents in an attempt to sanitize it, or turn it loose as a chaff blizzard of a million pages must be even more horrible. Releasing the dogs of drone murder and cruise missiles is not enough to make it go away.

In Heather Cox Richardson's Boxing Day letter, after quoting one of DOPUS' hundreds of "truths," the one ending with "Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas!", this (with BlueSky links brought inline):

Bill Kristol of The Bulwark wrote: “Donald Trump, basically acknowledging that so far at least he’s losing the fight over Epstein.” MeidasTouch noted: “This is what’s known as “consciousness of guilt.”

That's not to say we won't see darker times before the figurative days get brighter. Imagine a full-on "Merry Christmas" barrage from your current federal government, including the murderer who styles himself Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, name-dropping "our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ."

"May His light bring peace, hope, and joy to you and your families," Hegseth concluded, just before commanding the launch of missiles into Nigeria.

Thanks for your, uh, help?

Curious plop in my inbox from the "Apple Support Community," congratulating me on "5 upvotes!" It quoted part of my reply in a thread that has now been viewed "79182 times," which is a lot, and a lot more than 5. My response rate is a bit over 0.006%. The useful kernel of information I gave was confirmation that there's a bizarre and inexplicable side effect that turning off synching hides all existing Notes. Apple Notes? (Is there such a thing? Wouldn't it have to be iNotes?) I only have one Apple device in the house, somewhere, from when I was in the software business. It has been unused of late, and its battery flat for years.

They don't point me to the mysterious and long-forgotten thread. They do point me to "Share what you know and get recognized," telling me how I can "Earn points" and colored dots to show how useful I am. With 500 points, I can upload a custom avatar image, oh boy. At 8,000, I'd "Earn access to The Lounge, an exclusive area for high-level members," and get a 2x3 array of purple dots. (I actually prefer level 5, with the pentagram. Also, the level 9 orange array is way cooler than the level 10 pyramid, but I am not on my way to 50,000 or 80,000 points in either case.)

I have maxed out the utility of my one (and only?) comment, at 6 points for each logged-in member upvote of my reply, up to 30 points per reply. Kindly, my less than 150 points has me at "Level 1" rather than Level 0.

Oh wait, there is a link to the discussion. The subject was Stop Notes from email to myself, from a Level 1 Author in 2011, with that Blueoyster101 Level 1-er solution. And my comment posted the morning of Apr 2, 2012. Those 5 upvotes and 30 points were a long time coming. FWIW:

fortboise
User level: Level 1 • 4 points
Apr 2, 2012 9:28 AM in response to honolulu75

Blueoyster101 provided the answer I needed, with my acceptance of the (bizarre and inexplicable) side effect that turning off synching hides all existing Notes. Happily I didn't have any Notes I wasn't prepared to lose.

jessicafromlower hutt's information was interesting, but since I don't have a Mac, or Mac email (just a 3g iPad), not sure how to apply it. I gather it's Mac email's configuration of the gmail account, not something on gmail.

I'm replying to honolulu75, because I agree the issue is very frustrating, but completely disagree that this is "way too simple." The Notes app designers made a strange choice, and provided no means to modify it. Turn off synching and lose access to saved information? That's crazy.

23.Dec.2025

Shaggy bear story

Pennsylvania is the fifth most populous state in the union, with more than 13 million people, and something like 18,000 black bears. Those bears used to range over "around 12 counties," and are now in "more than 50" of the 67 counties.

"2024 marked the sixth straight year that bear license sales topped 200,000, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC). Hunters in 2024 harvested 2,642 bears in 56 of the state’s 67 counties. On Nov. 22, a bear was bagged in Butler County weighing over 700 pounds, so far the largest of the 2025 season."

That's a hell of a bear. "Harvested," eh. Salena Zito's opinion piece in the WaPo is about bear hunting, mostly, but whatever weird connections she's seeing to "Pennsylvania’s wild politics."

For some reason, we're told that "we must understand 'bear camp'" in order to have a handle on the swinginest swing state. Because the 1 in 65 Pennsylvanians who get a bear hunting license have a sense of place and tradition (older than Daniel Boone, thankyouverymuch) that transcends profession and party. Whether or not they're the one in 5,000 who actually manages to kill one. They all go out and mingle in the woods, even on Sunday now if they want to.

"Those who believe hunting is a bunch of yahoos shooting guns for a trophy don’t comprehend the science, conservation ethic and basic component of stocking the pantry."

Net net, bear hunting "traditions" are bigger than political differences, is that the story? Really? It was a fun romp in the woods, but color me unpersuaded.

Second Solstice, 2025

Nadir (maybe)

Slipping behind in my daily reads as I work to assembly a biennial photo album, but I caught up with Heather Cox Richardson's Dec. 18 missive, The Summer Soldier this morning. It's all about "the times that try men’s souls," 249 Decembers ago when Independence had been Declared but was nowhere close to realized.

"This new vision of human government was an exciting thing to declare in the heat of a Philadelphia summer after a year of skirmishing between the colonists and British regulars, but by December 1776, enthusiasm for this daring new experiment was ebbing. Shortly after colonists had cheered news of independence in July as local leaders read copies of the Continental Congress’s declaration in meetinghouses and taverns in cities and small towns throughout the colonies, the British moved on General George Washington and the troops in New York City....

"By mid-December, things looked bleak... The 5,000 soldiers with Washington who were still able to fight were demoralized from their repeated losses and retreats, and since the Continental Congress had kept enlistments short so as not to risk a standing army, many of the men would be free to leave the army at the end of the year, further weakening it."

The 8 year war was compressed into six episodes in the film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt that came out this year. Not quite as numbing as the real thing, but moreso than the skipping lightly parts we heard about in elementary school.

Our once-new form of government seemed a permanent success for a time, but now is far from sure. HCR's closing, from Tom Paine, reminds us we're still early in this new fight.

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,” Paine wrote in that fraught moment, “yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

19.Dec.2025

Let's turn this thing around

The change of direction is slow ("solstice," don't you know), but sure. We are approaching our northern nadir, and will be leaning into the light of a new year, and its opportunity to make things better. Pace yourselves. The day's forecast, from dawn:

Rain. High near 54. Southeast wind 5 to 11 mph becoming northwest in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 24 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.

Rain is good here. We need it. High near 54 is cray. That's out of whack. Our local ski hill (6,150 ft at the front base, 5,790 ft at the bottom of Pine Creek chair) can't get below freezing and stay there. High of 39 today. They'll make do another weekend pushing last year's snow around into a terrain park.

Sunset is slipping later already. (Sunrise will be along in 3 weeks' time.) Make the most of what you have. The time is now.

18.Dec.2025

Too busy to opine (much), just headlines

The Kennedy Center is still the Kennedy Center. (Sorry, Biff.) The "unusual" board meeting at the Palm Beach home of the casino magnate Steve Wynn, whose wife, Andrea, sits on the board nothwithstanding. Also Lee Greenwood performing "God Bless the USA" at the meeting notwithsanding. OMG. Congress created it, and controls the naming.

Don's Best Friend: How Epstein and Trump Bonded Over the Pursuit of Women

Once Again, Health Care Proves to Be a Bitter Political Pill for G.O.P. "The inability to find a credible counter to the Affordable Care Act has long bedeviled Republicans and cost them at the polls. It’s threatening to do so again next year."

Next NYT Magazine piece, What to Know About the Origins of Jeffrey Epstein’s Wealth is that their investigation "found that he built it through scams, theft and lies." Gosh that sounds familiar.

DOPUS vents his pique in plaques. You couldn't imagine this level of pettiness before the current regime. The people will get their house back, and when they do, they will undo the damage that's been done this year.

Bret Stephens still has time to opine, and even the one of the most right-wing stallions in the NYT opinion stable is off the reservation.

"[W]hat more is there to say about the character of this petty, hollow, squalid, overstuffed man? — sometimes the point bears stressing: We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House."

He goes on in some detail. And it comes to this:

"Right now, in every grotesque social media post; in every cabinet meeting devoted, North Korea-like, to adulating him; in every executive-order-signing ceremony intended to make him appear like a Chinese emperor; in every fawning reference to all the peace he’s supposedly brought the world; in every Neronic enlargement of the White House’s East Wing; in every classless dig at his predecessor; in every shady deal his family is striking to enrich itself; in every White House gathering of tech billionaires paying him court (in the literal senses of both “pay” and “court”); in every visiting foreign leader who learns to abase himself to avoid some capricious tariff or other punishment — in all this and more, our standards as a nation are being debased, our manners barbarized."

17.Dec.2025

Dear Idaho Senators

Our Republican pair have largely been useless quislings over the last decade, and I don't expect action from them anytime soon, let alone a meaningful response to a consituent. But I did want to let them know what I think about current events, and what they should be doing. It make a difference if enough people called them out. Called this morning and talked to Jim Risch's staffer and an answering machine for Mike Crapo, and put in three requests:

1) Stop the betrayal of our allies in Ukraine, and the Trump administration's capitulation to the Russian invaders. Rewarding military aggression is an invitation to wider war;

2) Call for stopping the murder of alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific, and prosecution of the perpetrators, starting with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth; and

3) A blockade of Venezuela would be an act of war. Congress has not declared war. It is your duty to stop this and other high crimes of this administration.

13.Dec.2025

Font...astic!

I enjoy the weekly NYT News Quiz, privately rolling my eyes at their questions about sports and entertainment, which are Not News, eh, and the usual nexus of my errors. (Cases in point: something something about an old quarterback, and the Golden Globes nominations for 5 films I haven't even heard of.)

If you haven't done (and want to do) this week's, SPOILER ALERT. Answer to one question follows below. Question 6 of 11 was: "Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered the State Department to stop using the font Calibri in official documents, restoring the use of which serif typeface?"

Choices were Baskerville (woof!), Garamond, Goudy Old Style (Make America Goudy again), Rockwell, and Times New Roman. Are you a news junky? Do you already know the astounding answer?

"It’s Times New Roman. While framed mostly as a matter of clarity and formality in presentation, Rubio’s directive to all diplomatic posts around the world blamed “radical” diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs for the switch to Calibri, which is typically considered more accessible for people with reading challenges."

Our times-line is now blending seamlessly into AI slop and The Onion. (Their top headline just now: Frustrated Trump Struggling To Find Any Infrastructure Left In Indiana To Destroy. Did our retribution reprobate actually threaten to strip all federal funding from the state if they didn't gerrymander the way he wanted them to? It's perfectly on brand, except for the "privately" element. He loves to crime out in the open. But "Hoosiers are a hardy lot, and they don’t like to be threatened.")

We're not living beyond parody, but we're on the verge. In other newsy quiz-like objects, I missed one item in the Flashback quiz, by more than 280 million years. "Close!" it told me, cheerily.

Oh, and speaking of TNR, The New Republic has some news headlines (set in Tiempos Fine, another serif font), including Greg Sargent's SLAP-DOWN, Fiasco for Trump as Judge Issues Harsh Rebuke in Ábrego García Case, probably still not the end of his suffering to please a psychopath; Trump’s DOJ Sues Fulton County and Four States to Seize Voter Ballots (will he get those 11,800 votes he wanted Georgia's Republican leadership to manufacture for him 5 years ago?); the transcript of Grace Segers explaining to Perry Bacon Why Trump May Never Be Popular Again; and Michael Tomasky's Sorry, but You Had to Be an Idiot to Believe Trump Could Lower Prices.

11.Dec.2025

Death of a salesman

In this twilight of our Republic, Mary Geddry is a perfect chronicler of the tragedy evolving into farce. I can hardly keep up with her output, and when I see it on Facebook, it tends to run tl;dr, but I did read this Dec. 9 episode, out loud for my and my spouse's morning entertainment. All I can say is, ay yi yi.

Trump's Poconos speech wasn't a comeback, it was an autopsy in real time. You're going to need to see for yourself. After the warm-up chant of "Heat. Heat. Heat," the Stairway to Heaven, the Mount Airy Casino Resort (just put a quarter in the slot and give 'er a pull!), his favorite economic fantasies, his favorite word in the dictionary (quickly demoted to 5th place, inexplicably), "clean, beautiful coal," his weird tilt at "windmills," and his admiration for North Korea's border security, it came to the meaty heart of his "extended racist tirade, so naked, so bile-soaked, and so divorced from factual or moral grounding that it felt less like a political argument than an eruption of whatever filters he once possessed finally giving way."

The racism is closely tied to the accusations that are his long-running confession that began on the golden down escalator ten years ago. He and his clan are demonstrably "filthy," "dirty," "disgusting," and "ridden with crime," but none of that matters if your skin is white. Or orange-ish.

"The racist venom didn’t appear as a calculated wedge issue; it spilled out as though he were no longer capable of distinguishing between inside voice and outside voice, campaign rhetoric and barroom rant, policy argument and personal fantasy. His disinhibition, already on full display throughout the speech, reached its apex here, amplifying not just his cruelty but his confusion. The collapse of restraint and the collapse of coherence marched in lockstep....

"He brought the ordeal to a close with the familiar cadences of his ritualistic catechism, intoning that he would make America powerful again, wealthy again, healthy again, strong again, proud again, safe again, and, inevitably, great again. And then, with no transition whatsoever, the speakers erupted into “YMCA.” A disco anthem about communal showering became the grand finale of a speech ostensibly crafted to persuade the country that Donald Trump is once again a serious statesman, restored to form and ready to lead.

"Thus the resurrection tour ended exactly as it began: unintentionally comic, deeply strange, and wildly off-key."

You want more? Another shabby rally yesterday with literally dozens of people going wild for Mr. T's YMCA dance moves? Another dip into our long national nightmare?

There is more. His sit-down with the disturbingly fawning Politico was A Warm-Up Gaggle for a Cold, Hard Collapse. We've got Don Quixote, King Lear, and Willy Loman all at once, with modern diagnostic imagery at hand.

"In a late-night rant, Trump confessed he has taken at least three cognitive exams in recent months, this, on top of the ones in April and October and the string he took in 2024. Neurologists are unanimous: nobody takes these tests this often unless doctors are actively tracking decline. Trump insists he “aced” them, though he refuses to release results, much like the MRI he claims to have taken “preventatively.” Radiologists say there is no such thing as a “preventative abdominal MRI.” If he had a full-body scan, omitting the brain results is… well, that’s the part everyone keeps noticing, isn’t it?"

8.Dec.2025

An electric motorcycle could kill you

Whether you're riding it, or someone else is, and hits you. This week's (Dec. 7) NYT Magazine cover feature shows a weirdly riderless e-moto smokin' its back tire in a wheelie, under the jolt-orange headline, ARE E-BIKES OUT OF CONTROL?

The answer is yes, obviously, in the form of MOTO-BIKES. Not that you need a case in point, but mine from two days ago, riding on the BSU campus approaching the relatively narrow "Friendship Bridge" over the Boise River. Two small children, on a what I would have called a motor scooter before the small-wheeled things happened slalomed through foot traffic and over the bridge to the north side greenbelt, and I thought ay-yi-yi, I'll just stay on this side.

Didn't think we were racing, but as it turned out, as I was crossing back to the south side on the 1923 railroad truss bridge a mile and a half downstream, they zipped under me, having crossed back to that side of the river along the way. The boy (of course) driving was maybe 10? and the girl behind him a bit younger, and smaller. They had helmets on, at least. But OMG, what a hazard to navigation (and adult knees).

Was there another Magazine piece a week earlier? I clicked through a gift link to a Nov. 30 Magazine URL to the 1,213 comments on "The Shocking Crash That Led One Count to Reckon With the Dangers of E-Bikes." (Turns out, it is the story that went to print in the Dec. 7 Magazine, under the headline "The E-Bike [sic] Dilemma." Sampling:

"Chicago’s famous Shirley Ryan Rehab Center is filled with life altering spinal injuries to [motobike]-riders..." "a total menace" and yes, 1000%, "They should be treated as motorcycles, not bikes." Because they are motorcycles, you know? "My son was killed riding his e-bike with only a bicycle helmet on..." From NYC, "I’ve been knocked down twice and run into once..." "I now alter my routes and time of riding to avoid when the grade schools get out because it is too crazy." "A disaster in the making." "too many [moto]-bike riders are not also experienced bicyclists"

And the category observation: "[M]ore should be done to distinguish between the electric motos and traditional pedal assist bikes. There is just so much depth and variable within the term "e-bike" that the saying e-bike is almost meaningless."

Not sure if I'm ready for pedal assist bikes to be "traditional," but yeah, it's not the "Class 1" pedal assist that's the issue; it's the electric motorcycles that are the problem, with inexperienced, often reckless drivers of them flaunting regulations (do we have regulations?! There's a "crazy quilt of local rules") and good sense. Now that “throttle devices,” Class 2 machines, "have captured an estimated two-thirds of the e-bike market," it's a public health crisis. Emphasis added:

"During the same four-year period when nationwide sales quadrupled, e-bike injuries increased by a factor of 10, to 23,493 from 2,215, according to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System. A study by the University of California, San Francisco, found that from 2017 to 2022, head injuries from e-bike accidents increased 49-fold."

And about the built-in device regulations,

"To conform with federal law, Class 2 e-bikes have “speed controllers” that keep users under the limit. But these can be circumvented by magnets, dongles, third-party apps, “tuning kits,” wire clippers or even software provided by the manufacturer — unlocking modifications popularly called “jailbreaking.” “You do it by pushing a button or two or entering a code on the display,” Mittelstaedt says. “It’s as easy as changing a setting on your iPhone.”

Go Pack Go

Growing up in Wisconsin in the 1960s, I was raised on Green Bay Packers football. (Mostly black and white football, on Sunday TV.) Nobody I knew had "merch" (or knew there'd be such a word, later), but we knew them all by numbers. We'd be out in the large-enough yard at the end of the block playing 2 or 3 a side before the game, and then we'd come inside for the event of the week. The Packers (almost) always won.

Our church had a "Sports Night" once a year, with some apparently well-connected recruiting bringing in big name talent from the Braves and the Packers. (Were there other sports? Can't imagine what they would have been.) As kids in the all-ages audience, we had two goals: staying awake through the too-long blather; and getting as many autographs as possible afterwards. None saved that I know of. When the invisible powers came up with a "Super Bowl," the Packers won that, too. And the second year.

So when I saw a kid on the greenbelt yesterday wearing a green jersey, it made me smile. Even though I'm not keeping up enough to know for sure who's 10 these days (I wanted to ask him if he knew who 15 was, but not likely.) I was out for a bike ride with the DVR set to capture the game (at Lambeau, in December, in living color, against Da Bears, for 1st place in the NFC North), and see Jordan Love's quarterbacking at its best. (I'm not as strong as I once was; with time running out in the 4th quarter, Green Bay having just taken the lead 28-21, I looked into the past to see how it ended, to relieve the suffering of Not Knowing in the final expanded minutes. Not sure if the deciding play was more or less joyful as a result, but amply joyful.

I'm not as crazy about commentary (overdose of Tom Brady), and did not stick around for the afterwords, but this morning I came across the thing about the game's MVP, and Jordan Love, and Christian Watson who caught that game-winning TD pass from Love.

Packer football. There's nothing else like it.

Crazy sauce

On Democracy Docket's YouTube channel (from 6 days ago), Marc Elias' interview with former US Attorney Joyce Vance. Shorter, that you already knew: "Donald Trump is weaponizing the Department of Justice to persecute his political enemies."

It passed without my notice that there's a +rumpian effort to "take all of his grievances and put them in one US attorney's office to go after everyone from Jack Smith to John Brennan to Barack Obama." Vance:

"Look, first thing, I don't think that we should even pretend for a second that there's legitimacy to this. There isn't. This is a revenge prosecution, a corruption of the Justice Department, a blatant effort, by the way, to impanel a grand jury in the division in the Southern District of Florida where Donald Trump's favorite judge, Aileen Cannon, who torpedoed the Mar-a-Lago case sits. So it's just crazy sauce from start to finish."

Unsolicited promo: we support Democracy Docket and its important work, and have a paying subscription to Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance.

6.Dec.2025

TL;DR

The tab stack that usually gets bookmarked to oblivion daily stayed on overnight, so here we go.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett Introduces the “No Presidential Payouts Act” to Stop Taxpayer Dollars from Covering a President’s Legal Bills. (Whatever happened to that the $238 million DOPUS wanted to pay himself? MAGA loves to celebrate him "not taking a salary" while ignoring the swampful of corrupt self-dealing.)

Democracy Docket Explainer: GOP’s Multi-Front Effort to Shield Missouri Gerrymander From Voters, "one of the most brazen assaults on democracy of the Trump era." Organizers say they have enough signatures to get it on the ballot, and GOP officials have:

• filed a lawsuit to strip voters of the right to veto a congressional map; 
• tried to throw out tens of thousands of signatures; 
• written blatantly biased ballot language to describe the measure to voters; 
• used misleading text messages to try to pressure voters into removing their names from the petitions; 
• and even contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a bid to intimidate signature gatherers.

More Democracy Docket: DOJ Sues Six More States in Sweeping Push to Obtain Unredacted Voter Rolls. The DOJ wants a "sweeping trove of voter data, including full names, residential addresses, birth dates, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers."

A recommendation for Jill Lepore's history of the United States, These Truths prompted me to request a copy from the library, and I'm reminded it's waiting for me there.

The Pulitzer Center's repost of Nick Turse in The Intercept_: For a Century, the American Way of War Has Meant Killing Civilians. The lede describes one of many instances of confirmation bias turned deadly:

"Nearly a century ago in Nicaragua, American Marines in an armed propeller plane spotted a group of civilian men chopping weeds and trimming trees far below. Convinced that something nefarious was underway, they opened fire. The U.S. never bothered to count the wounded and dead."

Dresden is mentioned, reminding me of reading Kurt Vonnegut when I was a teenager. Also as a brand-new teenager, following the 1968 election for US History class, I chose the Wallace/LeMay ticket as the possibly most interesting.

"At war in Korea not long after [the atomic capper to WW II], Gen. Douglas MacArthur declared that every city and village in the north was to be destroyed. And they were. Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay later bragged that the U.S. had “killed off over a million civilian Koreans and drove several million more from their homes.”

Lawfare, Gabor Rona way back on October 2 Venezuelan Boat Attacks: Utterly Unprecedented and Patently Predictable.

"There is no question that these attacks are unlawful. But many experts overstate the extent to which they were previously unimaginable given past U.S. practice. To be clear, these attacks are meaningfully different from the lethal attacks conducted by prior administrations; in that sense, they are unprecedented. But the legal abuses of the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations form a foundation upon which the Trump policy is built....

"Under the law of jus ad bellum, as reflected in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, the right to use force in self-defense is wisely triggered not by the degree of harm that is prevented but, rather, by the unavailability of methods short of force to neutralize the threat."

God bless Daniel Dale, still tirelessly fact-checking the maze of trumpery nonsense and disinformation. "As usual," there was a long list of false claims at the latest Cabinet fluffing. Just one chestnut to roast on your Merry Christmas fire:

"Trump repeated his false claim that “we ended eight wars” and “I’ve settled eight wars.” While Trump has played a role in resolving some conflicts (at least temporarily), the “eight” figure is a clear exaggeration."

The Nation, back on Sept. 8: With the Strike on a “Drug-Carrying Boat,” Trump Returns to a Dangerous US Policy for Latin America. "The attack on a ship off the Venezuelan coast is the first time the US has carried out a deadly military operation on its own in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama."

Ok, this one was added this morning. Will Bunch, for The Philadelphia Inquirer: Life during wartime in New Orleans as feds terrorize Latinos who saved a city. "The first day of long-feared federal immigration raids across Greater New Orleans exposes the Big Lie of mass deportation"; Bunch travelled to the Big Easy "to see what it looked and felt like when the U.S. government sends a commando squad to wage war on one of its own cities."

"Within a couple of hours — in raids that were, in fact, wildly untargeted — SUV caravans bearing masked, green-uniformed U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents stormed into parking lots and at suburban Home Depots and Lowe’s, blitzkrieged Latino restaurants and a car wash on a busy strip near the airport, and cruised neighborhoods looking for roofers to arrest....

"[T]he very people who came to the United States with hammers and 16-hours-a-day energy to rescue New Orleans in its darkest hour, after flooding from 2005’s Hurricane Katrina swamped thousands of homes and killed 1,833 people, are now seeing their new world turned upside down by the same U.S. government that vowed to rebuild the Crescent City."

Joyce Vance, on Civil Discourse: two Trump-appointed judges on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals approve the utter destruction of independent agencies created by Congress, in favor of autocracy.

"The government asked the court to adopt what Judge Pan [in her dissent] calls “an unprecedented interpretation of the Constitution.” She writes that it “would lead to the full politicization of our government and a massive transfer of power to the President.”

The Intercept_'s murder tracking is updated with another "Unspecified Designated Terrorist Organization" target, 4 more killed in the Pacific Ocean, so that SecDeath can prove he's a Real Warrior®.

Speaking of that guy, our "disaster" of a defense secretary, Michael Tomasky for The New Republic: Cowardly Pete Hegseth Is This Week’s Proof of the GOP’s Moral Rot.

"He’s a bombastic idiot. He’s a liar. And he’s a weasel: Under fire for a second military strike on an alleged drug boat, which killed two survivors of the first strike and was possibly a war crime, he has publicly shifted all responsibility to a uniformed Naval officer who cannot defend himself in public. Finally, I’d add that he has utter contempt for the historic rules of honorable military engagement, but the video that emerged this week of him paying rhetorical homage to those rules back in 2016 when Democrats ran the Pentagon proves that he doesn’t even live according to that benighted “principle” and instead operates on the basis of no principle other than the usual Republican ones—political advantage and power."

(For the record, having come to know weasels a little better over the years, I do not use them as an insult. They're beautiful.) We're reminded that "three Republicans did vote against Hegseth: Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitch McConnell. JD Vance had to hustle up to the Capitol to break the tie."

Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee opined back then that the "unconventional" nominee was "an excellent choice,” bringing “a new warrior ethos” and “energy” and “fresh ideas.”

"Wicker has been around Washington for three decades. He’s a former Air Force officer. There is zero chance he actually believed those words that he spoke that January day. But he spoke them, and 46 of his colleagues mouthed similarly mendacious platitudes."

Idaho Capital Sun featured Vote Idaho's new data visualization, an interactive slide deck detailing the $2.5 million (and counting) this year to influence state politics. Vote Idaho leaves it up to the reader to find out more about the organizations listed.

Almost a quarter of that was by Missouri's "Modern Ag Alliance," with more than triple the next closest organization (DC's American Federation for Children). Their catching slogan is "CONTROL WEEDS, NOT FARMING" which really means DON'T REGULATE GLYPHOSATE. The Sun reported that their main interest was promoting House Bill 303, which would have largely granted legal immunity to pesticide manufacturers. The $621,019 MAA spent wasn't enough to get it out of committee, but they'll be back for the 2026 session.

You might not be shocked, shocked to realize the American Federation for Children is a smoke screen for getting public funds going to providate education. (Focused on "freedom to choose the best K-12 education for [your] children.")

Citizens Alliance of Idaho touts their "Pledge" purity test to support personal weaponry, "individual medical freedom," "election integrity," "expanding education freedom," and the right to due process, that's good.

Yes.Every.Kid is another org slyly working to defund public schools. Young Americans for Liberty is "a libertarian conservative student activism organization headquartered in Austin, Texas."

It isn't until the 6th organization that we get to one that isn't corporate astroturf; the anti-voucher Save Our Schools Idaho.

5.Dec.2025

WOD DOW reboot: Lawful and needful murder

We're all witnessing how it could happen here. It is happening here, thanks to the likes of Tom Cotton, lawyer, once a platoon leader in the 101st Airborne in Iraq, rising to the rank of 1st Lieutenant and getting himself elected to the House in 2012, and Senate in 2014. Just after the 2016 election that brought Trump into office, he denied that waterboarding is a form of torture. Earlier that year, he helped block Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court by Obama ("Why would we cut off the national debate on the next justice? Why would we squelch the voice of the populace?"), and four years later helped fast-track Amy Coney Barrett's nomination, because she was Trump's nominee.

The September 2 quadruple tap murder in the Caribbean is big in the news right now, and on last night's PBS Newshour, Cotton opined on the private viewing of the drone movie, and a classified briefing from Admiral Frank Mitch Bradley and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine. We heard that "the first strike killed nine people and that, after the first strike, the boat was still seaworthy, the men on board still had drugs and communications, which meant they were still combatants, and a rescue boat was approaching."

"Combatants." Early on in the boat killing campaign, when the shock and awe of this first "lethal," "kinetic," "precision" strike was fresh, the ABC news report described the conclusory bragging. DOPUS, who has a disturbing way with words these days: “We just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat.” SecDeath Hegseth: "We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented. And that was Tren de Aragua narcoterrorist organization designated by the United States as trying to poison our country with illicit drugs." And SecState Marco Rubio: "Interdiction doesn't work. What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them." (Whatever happened to Rodrigo Duterte, anyway?)

Not normally a go-to source for me, but the Washington Examiner's "Daily Defense" captures the Zeitgeist in its headline: Dueling narratives: Boat strike video largely viewed through partisan lens. He said, he said, what are you gonna do? First lieutenant Cotton, who hasn't brushed up on his Law of War Manual lately:

"I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for the United States, back over so they could stay in the fight. The first strike, the second strike, and the third and fourth strike on September 2 were entirely lawful and needful and they were exactly what we would expect our military commanders to do."

Compare that to Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Newshour

"What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I have seen in my time in public service. You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who were killed by the United States."

And Himes quoted at greater length in the Washington Examiner:

“I can’t describe it in detail, but to tell you that the initial strike, as you might imagine, when a piece of munitions falls on a small boat, did an immense amount of damage, causing a huge amount of fire.”

“I want you to imagine two individuals clinging to wreckage in the middle of a vast ocean without any tools, without any weapons. These were two guys who had survived a huge military strike, clinging to a piece of wood. And in that moment, subsequent to the first strike, the decision was taken to kill them.”

Heather Cox Richardson's Dec. 4 daily adds this gruesome detail: after the intial strike had killed nine of the eleven people on the boat, "set the vessel on fire and split it in half, capsizing it and leaving two survivors clinging to the wreckage," (emphasis added)

"For the next 41 minutes, U.S. officers watched as the men struggled to right what was left of the boat. Then, rather than rescuing the two men, Admiral Bradley ordered a second strike that killed them, now saying he intended to destroy the vessel, which the administration claims was a military target."

And she quotes Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's succinct summary of what's wrong with this picture:

“There is a difference between being accused of being a bad guy and being a bad guy. It is called the presumption of innocence. It is called due process. It is called, basically, justice that our country was founded upon.”

Like the one that we had for Juan Orlando Hernández for three weeks in 2024," marked by extraordinary testimony from convicted drug traffickers and former associates," after which a federal jury in New York found him guilty of (1) conspiring to import cocaine into the United States, (2) using and carrying machine guns and destructive devices during, and possessing machine guns and destructive devices in furtherance of, the cocaine importation conspiracy, and (3) conspiring to use and carry machine guns, etc. Remember? (InSight Crime is going to have to update their series headline: The Rise and Fall of Honduras Ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández. Psych!)

Word was, Hernández partnered with traffickers to Transport Tons of Cocaine through Honduras from 2004 to 2022. 500 hundred metric tons, give or take. Organized crime to "receive tons of cocaine sent to Honduras from, among other places, Colombia and Venezuela, via maritime and air routes," that was then "transited westward in Honduras toward its border with Guatemala and eventually north to the United States," with "the support and direct protection of certain prominent Honduran public officials, including Hernández," lubricated with "millions of dollars in bribes to Hernández and other public officials."

"US prosecutors—among them Emil Bove, who later became one of Trump’s lawyers and is now a Trump-appointed federal judge—spent years building a case against Hernández, which was based on the testimony of numerous drug traffickers, ledgers, and other evidence they presented in court."

Fast forward to early September 2025, when eight Navy warships had been deployed to the Caribbean and Pacific "to enhance counter-narcotics operations near Central and South American countries." The War on Drugs, for real, beyond Richard Nixon's wildest dream.

A month ago, Henry Gass considered the question Is it legal? for the Christian Science Monitor, two months after none of the details were confirmed. The tally from public reporting on Nov. 10 was 19 strikes, 76 dead. The North Korean spokesperson-level justification: "The strikes are lawful, according to the administration, because the United States is in an armed conflict with drug-trafficking groups it has labeled as foreign terrorist organizations." Is it armed conflict if only one side is shooting? Is it an "imminent threat" if an alleged "drug boat" is "headed towards, eventually, the United States"? No longer "a law enforcement issue," but "a national security issue" as our SecState declared?

“There has been no armed attack. There is no organized armed group [and] there is no armed conflict,” says Rebecca Ingber, a professor at Cardozo Law School and a former legal adviser at the State Department.

“Under international law, we’d call the targeted killing of suspected criminals an extrajudicial killing, and under U.S. domestic statutes it’s murder,” she adds.

As the CSM piece notes, "the use of deadly force is governed by broader legal frameworks—such as the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which is approved by Congress and used to justify deadly force against terrorist organizations." The all-purpose, War on Terror Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001 (AUMF) continues to spin deadly dividends, with a feckless congress unwilling to use even its limited power to check our murderous, demented autocrat. From Wikipedia: "The US Department of Justice (DOJ) stated in November 2025 that the 60-day limit of the War Powers Resolution did not apply to the airstrikes, as they involved unmanned vehicles that did not endanger US armed forces."

They can't shoot back at us, so it's not war? Not much of a "fight," at any rate. A month ago, the US Senate defeated a resolution that would have required congressional approval for further military action directed at Venezuela, following its October vote that failed to limit strikes in the Caribbean. The administration is not interested in legal advice.

"[E]arlier this year, the Trump administration fired senior military lawyers, known as judge advocates general, serving in the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The administration has made similar dismissals of perceived anti-Trump lawyers and agents at the Department of Justice and the FBI. After the JAG dismissals in February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters he didn’t want the lawyers to pose any “roadblocks to orders that are given by the commander in chief,” Military.com reported at the time."

There are now calls from both sides of the aisle to release the complete, unedited footage of the September 2 strike, "as the President as agreed to do." Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee are on the record.

While Pete SecDeath continues to brag up his air-conditioned "war fighting" crimes, replying to a Turning Point USA social media warrior that "Your wish is our command, Andrew. Just sunk another narco boat." Summary execution of four more alleged criminals (promoted to "narco-terrorists" for his convenience).

3.Dec.2025

More than 80 illegal killings now

CNN's timeline of the kickoff event in attacking supposed "narcoterrorists" with illegal "lethal, kinetic" strikes in the Caribbean is getting highlighted in my feed this morning, but there's a lot more to flesh out. Their sequence jumps from September 4, two days after the first strike, to November 28, when we were "in the wake of reporting by the Washington Post and CNN" about that first strike's double-tap. Which now we find out was only the second of four strikes needed to kill them all and sink whatever evidence there may have been.

After filling in the gap and clearing some of the fog of war crimes (and/or murder) with my own timeline (below), I found that CNN had started a timeline of all the US military strikes on boats posing no imminent threat to our national security, on November 2 (going by the URL), and keeping it updated. I used that to fill in October and November' events, and include the last entry at the end of my list.

Sept. 10:
Nick Turse reported on The Intercept that a "follow-up attack" was used to kill survivors of the initial strike. Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is an expert in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war was quoted:

“The U.S. president is asserting the power to engage in the premeditated killing of people outside of armed conflict. There is no evidence that these people were lawful targets. The Trump administration hasn’t established that there was an armed conflict, hasn’t established that the law of armed conflict governed any such hostilities, and hasn’t established that the people aboard the vessel, the vessel itself, or its cargo were lawful targets under the law of war.”

The report continued.

"Last week, a high-ranking Pentagon official who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity said that the strike in the Caribbean was a criminal attack on civilians and said that the Trump administration paved the way for it by firing the top legal authorities of the Army and the Air Force earlier this year.

“The U.S. is now directly targeting civilians. Drug traffickers may be criminals but they aren’t combatants,” the War Department official said. “When Trump fired the military’s top lawyers the rest saw the writing on the wall, and instead of being a critical firebreak they are now a rubber stamp complicit in this crime.”

Sept. 15
Alejandro Andres Carranza Medina, a 42-year-old fisherman, was killed in by a U.S. military strike off the coast of Colombia. (The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights' Dec. 2 statement has dates and body counts for many of the strikes, and calls on the US to: "refrain from employing lethal military force in the context of public security operations, ensuring that any counter-crime or security operation fully complies with international human rights standards; conduct prompt, impartial, and independent investigations into all deaths and detentions resulting from these actions; and adopt effective measures to prevent recurrence.")

Sept. 25:
SecDef calls hundreds of US generals and admirals from around the globe to an in-person meeting in Virginia (held Tuesday, Sept. 30, at Marine Corps Base Quantico). CNN reported that Hegseth had called for double-decimation of the flag ranks in May. "At least 20%" fewer of them wanted. And that officers already fired included former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown; Adm. Lisa Franchetti, former Chief of Naval Operations; Adm. Linda Fagan, former Commandant of the Coast Guard; Gen. James Slife, former vice chief of the Air Force; Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, former head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency; Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, former chief of the Navy Reserve; and Rear Adm. Milton Sands, former head of Naval Special Warfare Command.

"Before taking on the role of defense secretary, Hegseth repeatedly voiced disdain for much of the military’s currently serving general and flag officer corps." After he himself had risen to the rank of Major in the Army National Guard (3 steps shy of one-star general), and then (the all-important) Fox News weekend commentator.

Oct. 15:
The president said he had authorized the CIA to conduct operations inside Venezuela, "and said he was weighing carrying out land operations on the country."

Oct. 16:
SecDef announces the retirement of Admiral Alvin Holsey, head of US Southern Command, one year into what's normally a 3 year posting. The NYT reported that "one current and one former U.S. official, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said that Admiral Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats."

“Prior to Trump, I can’t think of a combatant commander who left his or her post early, ever,” said Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Oct. 17:
The Washington Post reported that in the "sixth known attack on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean," there were two survivors who were taken into custody, held aboard a Navy vessel, and then released to authorities in their home countries of Colombia, and Ecuador.

Oct. 21 & 22:
Two strikes in the Pacific Ocean killed "everyone on board," five more dead.

Oct. 24:
A the tenth attack, carried out in the night, killed all 6 crew members.

Oct. 27:
Multiple strikes in one day, "three missiles hitting four vessels in international waters of the eastern Pacific," with 14 killed. One survivor was not recovered, the Mexican Navy conduced a search without finding the person.

Oct. 29: Four more killed in the Pacific.

Nov. 1: Three killed in the Caribbean.

Nov. 4: Two killed in the eastern Pacific.

Nov. 6: Three killed in the Caribbean.

Nov. 9: Six killed in the eastern Pacific, in strikes against two separate vessels.

Nov. 10: Four killed in the Caribbean.

Nov. 11
USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, moved into the Caribbean three weeks after SecDef abruptly ordered it to leave the eastern Mediterranean and sail across the Atlantic. In the NYT report said that "cutting short the Ford’s scheduled deployment in the Mediterranean by several months and redirecting it to Latin America for a possible combat mission is highly unusual, current and former Navy officials said."

"News of the Ford’s arrival came a day after Mr. Hegseth announced that six people had been killed on Sunday [Nov. 9] in two more strikes on boats that he said were smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The latest strikes raised the death toll in the campaign to 76 people in 19 attacks in the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea since early September."

Also on Nov. 11, CNN reported "sources familiar with the matter" told them "the United Kingdom is no longer sharing intelligence with the US about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean because it does not want to be complicit in US military strikes and believes the attacks are illegal."

Nov. 15:
The last entry in CNN's boat strike timeline (updated yesterday), with the "21st known strike" announced by US Southern Command. Below that, the footer says "there have been at least 22 strikes resulting in 83 deaths and 2 survivors."

Dec. 2:
Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández, arrested in February 2022, tried and convicted in a three week trial last year, and sentenced to serve 45 years in prison for taking bribes—including $1 million from Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán—from drug traffickers moving cocaine through his country to the US, was released from prison following a pardon from President Donald Trump.

The judge in the trial said the evidence showed "Hernández employed “considerable acting skills” to make it seem that he was an anti-drug trafficking crusader while he deployed his nation’s police and military, when necessary, to protect the drug trade."

Under an epigram of John 8:32, Hernández's get-out-of-jail-free pleading to DOPUS is addressed to His Excellency Donald J. Trump, and opens with an extension of "my warmest greetings" and the conveyance of "my highest respect, esteem, and blessings." It's almost like a Cabinet meeting.

Hernández claimed that "the fight against narcotics was central to my presidency," and that back when they were both presidents, +rump said nice things about him, remember? His conviction was a "clear case of lawfare by the Biden-Harris administration," and he called out +rump's stirring words at his 2nd inauguration: "Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents." Boldly, and italicly.

And of course there's a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for good measure. That was easy.

2.Dec.2025

Mending a fuse, again

The heat went out on our big food dehydrator again, and the troubleshooting landing on "blown fuse," and fixing it was still accessible in memory. After I'd tracked down the replacement, I'd bought extra, because they're cheap, and the obtaining is the hard part. Searching for what, when and how, I found my notes (such as they are) in my blog for October, 2022.

Handy, again. Entertaining to revisit. Now that we've reached the end of the first quarter of the 21st century (!), we travel back in time to Y2K and IDK, maybe the peak of the food dehydrator market? Also, when more stuff was Made in the USA.

But my storytelling about the Minnesota company that made ours in early 1999 did not include any of the how-to I learned on the job three years ago. Finding my cache of fuses was easy enough, but how does this thing come apart again? Surfing the web for manuals was rather useless, as the company's POV was "no user serviceable parts inside," just buy a new one why don't you. And what I found in the way of DIY videos were lame or about later models. So, this time, better notes. First of all, what the intact base looks like, bottom, and top:

Note the two long assembly screws backed out. Don't do that (yet); that isn't how it comes apart. (Neither do the four foot pad screws nor the two nuts holding the motor to the bottom plate need to come out.)

The very tidy top cover of the base is press fit into the base assembly, and needs to be gently pried up and off. It has no other electrical or mechanical connections. Mark the top cover and bottom plate so you can keep the same rotational orientation for reassembly. (Not essential, but easier that way.) Once the cover is removed, the heating coil, fan impeller, fuse, and hello, thermister! (the little hole at 4:30) are exposed. Along with some of the fried hockey boogie from juicy dehydrator loads.

This image happens to be after my 2nd fuse replacement and partial reassembly, but you can (kind of) see how you'd take the old one out and put the new one in, eh? The problem is that the mounting screws are actually mounting bolts, and you won't be able to get them out (or reassembled) without being able to reach around to the underside to put a wrench on the nuts. Now is when you those two long screws come out and the inner reality (not pictured) is exposed. The fuse terminal mounting towers (let's call them) comprise, from the top down:

• Bolt
• Fuse lug
• Heater coil connection loop (one side)
• Ceramic insulator, upper
• Rubber gasket
• [Heater assembly plate]
• Ceramic insulator, lower
• Power wire lug (on one side)
• Lock washer
• Nut

The circuit comes up through the tower at bottom (in the photo), through the fuse, to the heater coil, around the world, and then down the third tower (upper right in this view) which you don't need to mess with.

So, prep the fuse with cut to length, a suitable bend and lugs, disassemble the towers, replace the fuse, reassemble, and reinstall the long mounting screws from the bottom. Three of the four foot screws (which you didn't mess with) set the proper standoff between the bottom plate and the heater assembly plate. Plug it in to give it a quick power-on test to verify the heat is back, unplug, and reinstall the bottom assembly top cover, and done. You're welcome.

Oh, one other thing: you should wonder but why did the fuse blow (again)? Our best guess is that running the machine in the November-cold garage was too heavy a load. This time of year, we could use the heat (and humidity) inside, but it's a bit noisy to live around. Word to the wise. I still have two fuses left, if we forget. Alt title and search targets:

Nesco FD-1000 Food Dehydrator no heat fuse replacement

1.Dec.2025

Murderous kleptocracy, astride the globe

Given their paywall, and my too many things to read anyway, I don't get into the Wall Street Journal very much, so I appreciate Heather Cox Richardson's November-ender leading with the WSJ "Friday evening" (!) article,

"about the Trump administration’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine that illuminated the administration’s approach to the world at home, as well as overseas. Authors Drew Hinshaw, Benoit Faucon, Rebecca Ballhaus, Thomas Grove, and Joe Parkinson explained that the administration’s plan for peace was a Russian-led blueprint for joint U.S.-Russia economic cooperation that would funnel contracts for rebuilding Ukraine, extracting the valuable minerals in the Arctic, and even space exploration to a few favored U.S. and Russian businessmen."

Spoiler alert! "Many of those business leaders have close ties to the White House." Via "special envoy" Steve Witkoff (such a convenient posting with no need for the Senate's advice and consent; not that that's been worth spit lately), the real estate developer and "investor" serving as lickspittle to autocrats on both sides of any bilateral deal.

“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told the journalists. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska), member of the House Armed Services Committee, shared his thoughts on ABC's This Week on Sunday:

“Putin’s the invader, he’s the dictator, he’s murdered all his opponents. But I just don’t see that moral clarity coming from the White House. We saw that Wall Street Journal article yesterday that many people around the president are hoping to make billions of dollars—these are all billionaires in their own right—from... Russia, if they get a favorable agreement with Ukraine. That alarms me tremendously. I want to see America being the leader of the free world, standing up for what’s right, not for who can make a buck…. I don’t want to see a foreign policy based on greed. I want to see it based on doing the right thing.”

Things that used to go without saying, while the dirty dealing was better kept under wraps, but still: moral clarity would be a blessing. Excuse me for shouting HCR's mid-post summary:

"The Trump administration is replacing American democracy with a kleptocracy, a system of corruption in which a network of ruling elites use the institutions of government to steal public assets for their own private gain. It permits virtually unlimited theft while the head of state provides cover for his cronies through pardons and the uneven application of the law.

"It is the system Russia’s president Vladimir Putin exploits in Russia, and President Donald J. Trump is working to establish it in the United States of America."

There's more to recommend in HCR's piece—David Sacks advising the White House (and +rump family) on AI and crypto; the petro-monarchies that are the family's "most natural allies"; the personal courtesy commutation of David Gentile's 7-year sentence for defrauding investors; the "Epstein class" of networked grifters (including his "comeback consultant," and trumpy "consigliere, strategist, propagandist, and former senior counselor at the White House," Steve Bannon; Marjorie Taylor Greene's epiphany; and the rising anger of voters. With links! That one on Steve Bannon from Mona Charen is a hell of a read. After detailing the "private" Bannon appearing in emails with Jeffrey Epstein, considering the "public" persona:

"While sometimes casting doubt on the QAnon conspiracy, at other times he fed the flames. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was a frequent guest on his podcast; she could be counted on to denounce the Democrats as the “party of pedophiles.” At the height of the 2020 election, Bannon acknowledged that he had sometimes laughed at QAnon, but then pivoted: “The elephant in the room is, people say they’re crazy, I’m just leaving that—put a pin in it. But when they look at the facts of this, how are they not, at least an aspect of their argument, at least appears directionally to be correct.”

Yeah, that elephant in the room.

"Steve Bannon, the man millions of MAGA fans trust to tell it like it is, stands revealed as one of the most cynical liars ever to mar this country."

There's a comment from "Economics, history buff and animal lover" substacker Robert Jaffee that includes this:

"Trump also claims that America is facing a drug war, yet he has pardoned the founder of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, a dark web marketplace for buying and selling illicit drugs, including Fentanyl.

"He is also pardoning the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who is currently serving a 45-year prison sentence in the U.S. for drug trafficking. Yet, he is about to bomb Venezuela because he claims Maduro is engaging in the cocaine trade."

raveling

Tom von Alten