unraveling

28.Feb.2026

All for Oil, and Oil for All

War, again. Or "still." Amy Siskind said "I’m old enough to remember when Trump repeatedly said he had OBLITERATED Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and even fired the senior intelligence officer who had issued a report saying otherwise!" (One of the comments had a screen-cap from the WH website, June 25, 2025, the tweety/troothy headline: "Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News."

"The world is far safer," it began, just 8 months ago. "Take it from those who actually know," it said, before quoting our half-demented thug's inimitable Title Casing.

“Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term!”

And an Israeli general to assure us "we set it back by years, I repeat years." Our Secretary of Defense, restyled SecWar, started by murdering defenseless boaters in the Caribbean, and the Pacific, and no one in what passes for a position of responsibility these days batted much of an eye about murder. Or going into Venezuela to kidnap its dictator and his wife.

You'll recall that after he summoned all the top brass for a pep talk and to declare war on American cities (the ones in the US, not just Nuuk and Caracas), and beards, and those “stupid rules of engagement” (formerly known as "laws" and stuff), Major Major told his men the "warrior ethos" was now full-on. (He and his drone pilots had jumped the gun on that; starting the Caribbean murder campaign four weeks prior.) So here we go. Ready, fire, aim. Timothy Snyder's Facebook take:

"To complete the fascist transition, Trump has to give the country a war it does not want, and win it, and transform the society. He has brought us to the doorstep of a major war with Iran.

"That is the only escalation that could possibly work to advance the fascist transition. But it would not work. Trump is incompetent and so are his advisors. And war is hard. And Americans will not be patient. Perhaps they would change their minds if Trump had an explanation of what he is doing, but he doesn't."

And his longer analysis on his substack: Why Attack Iran? with the answer (spoiler alert!) in the dek: "Our Authoritarianism and Our Corruption." He's leaning more toward the latter, but after the mid-term election campaign kick-off last Tuesday evening, there is always the election interference angle. Still, all those mideastern bribes and "investments," this looks like payback time.

"Given the stupefyingly overt corruption of the Trump administration, one must ask whether the United States armed forces are now being used on a per-hire basis.

"Gulf Arab states who oppose Iranian power have generated extremely generous packages of compensation for companies associated with Trump personally and with members of his family. The United Arab Emirates invested in a family firm. The Saudis have provided numerous de facto gifts. And sometimes the gifts have been simply gifts. The Qataris gave Trump a jet. The list is very long.

"And now — we are using military force to take the side of precisely the countries who have enriched Trump and his family."

And Jim Wright:

"Trump says we should prepare for American casualties, because that happens in war and it's a sacrifice he's willing to make.

"Operation Epic Fury, which sounds like Stephan Miller overdosed on Viagra.

"It's obvious that the "negotiations" led by Trump's dipshit son-in-law were nothing but a distraction. Israel and the US had already planned this war....

"Trump's 'negotiations' with Iran were all a fraud. You can NEVER trust anything Trump says. He lied to Iran. He lied to our allies. He lied to us. And here we are, lied into a war again...."

And this pithy summation in another FB post from hi from himm:

"So, we're now in a war to force a change of government in a country where an authoritarian state uses violent military force to arrest, detain, disappear, imprison, and summarily kill its own citizens in the streets for protesting government, demanding its political and religious leaders be held accountable, and promoting liberty and justice for all. AND that government is hostile towards immigrants, intolerant of any religion but its own, believes women are less than men, and routinely threatens to invade its neighbors?

"I got that right?"

Ok, one more from Wright, and I'll stop. There's screen-cap from the AP, "Saudia Arabia says Iran launched a 'blatantly and cowardly' attack on Riyadh." (For those of us who still struggle to identify the sides, we're Christians, fighting with the Jews and the Sunnis against the Shia this time.)

"We attacked Venezuela, a major oil producer. And now the entirety of the Middle East is under attack and the Straits of Hormuz are likely closed to tanker traffic.

"Starting to understand why Trump keeps seizing oil tankers and why he put Venezuelan oil export under his personal control? Starting to understand why he demanded US oil companies take over Venezuelan oil fields and production?

"They planned this in detail. They planned the PROFITS in detail."

I'm sure there are very large pickup trucks with very large flags flying around the city this morning.

27.Feb.2026

Good news and warning

Joyce Vance puts the whole shorter in her post title: The SAVE Act Is Dead, Fulton County Is Fighting Back; So, Of Course, Trump Wants To Seize Control Of The Election.

I did not get around to urgently call my members of Congress, because Idaho. But mirabile dictu, "per Punchbowl News, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Utah’s John Curtis, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, and possibly others who weren’t named broke ranks." Hadn't even heard of our next-door state's other Senator before this, Mike Lee is sucking up all the oxygen for MAGA.

A federal district court judge in Atlanta is taking Fulton County's complaint about their 2020 ballots being wrongly taken by the thug administration seriously. And the (shorter) caution, in regard to thug cooking up another fake "emergency," this one about China supposedly interfering with the 2020 election, because, Loser. With all her linky, and my emphasis at the end:

"[A] 2021 intelligence review concluded that China did not engage in efforts to influence the 2020 election. There were multiple audits and recounts, court rulings, and investigations without any finding of widespread fraud. There was no evidence of coordinated foreign interference."

"So we all get it. It’s another ginned-up emergency. There wasn’t an outbreak of irrepressible crime on American streets that necessitated the federalization and deployment of the National Guard. Trump made that up. A Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, wasn’t invading the United States. Trump made that up. There wasn’t a balance of payments problem that warranted the imposition of exceptional tariffs. Trump made that up. And there’s not an emergency involving our elections that means Trump should take control of them. He’s making that up too—to the extent that there’s an emergency, he’s the cause of it.

26.Feb.26

Alternate realities

First things first: Heather Cox Richardson's Letter-summary of the whack thug show Tuesday night includes the supposedly brilliant Stephen Miller strategem to make Democrats stand up for a hokey choice, and when they didn't, to accuse them of being The Enemy. "Crazy" as thug put it, ever projecting his own problems. Eric Hoffer's The True Believer gets a nod. As Hoffer observed not long after WW II, "once people are wedded to a strongman, they will cling to him ever more tightly as his behavior becomes more and more erratic."

But there was a ray of sunshine from the usually dread rebuttal. (Remember how thirsty Marco Rubio was? And is?)

"[T]he response to the State of the Union—which is usually deadly—was a breath of fresh air. Delivered by Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger, the response was short and clean, and in a refreshing change from Trump’s constant focus on himself, it centered the American people."

From Spanberger, via HCR:

“In his speech tonight, the President did what he always does: he lied, he scapegoated, and he distracted. He also offered no real solutions to our nation’s pressing challenges—so many of which he is actively making worse.” Who is benefitting from “his rhetoric, his policies, his actions, and the short list of laws he’s pushed through this Republican Congress?

“He’s enriching himself, his family, his friends. The scale of the corruption is unprecedented. There’s the cover-up of the Epstein files, the crypto scams, cozying up to foreign princes for airplanes and billionaires for ballrooms, putting his name and face on buildings all over our nation’s capital. This is not what our founders envisioned. So, I’ll ask again: Is the President working for you?

“We all know the answer is no.”

Then there's a tightly excerpted "reel" of the State of the Union speech from Jimmy Kimmel—the perfect medium, right? Went looking for a link to it, and found his longer, night-of monologue, with a perfect Seargent-at-Arms send-up introduction. If only!

Mr. Speaker, I PRESENT THE INAUGURAL RECIPIENT OF THE 2026 FIFA PEACE PRIZE, THE RIGHTFUL WINNER OF THE 2025 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE, THE UNDISPUTED CHAMPION OF BEAUITFUL CLEAN COAL, THE CHAIRMAN THE TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF PEACE, SEMIFINALISTS FOR THE CARL'S JR. PRESIDENTIAL FITNESS AWARD, CAPTAIN KANGAROO, HE DOESN'T WEAR DIAPERS AND HE HAD NO IDEA HIS BEST FRIEND WAS A PEDOPHILE, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.

Which would be LOL funny if it weren't for, you know, all that. Kimmel made his point more directly a bit further in:

"Here's the real state of the Union, OK? We have a nutjob wanna be king whos's doing everything he can to censor opinions he doesn't want to hear, he has his goons arresting, incarcerating, and killing American citizens. He's cut funding for cancer research and children's hospitals while he raked in literally billions of dollars for himself and his family...."

It's not easy to make a short list. The generational damage being done by the thug and his Smash & Grab Party is going to leave a mark. (The wrecking ball razing a third of the White House was a big hint.)

Tell us that one about how you're the only president ever (other than George Washington, Herbert Hoover, and JFK) to donate your salary to "charity," grampa! While you and your crime family are stealing $tens of billions. Tom Homan's $50,000 bag of cash looks like weakness. Aim higher, man!

"He's coming after our right to vote. He's protecting pedophiles and won't explain it, he's lining the pockets of billionaires all while neglecting the sick, the poor, the hungry in the name of Jesus, by the way, you could read all about it in a Donald Trmp edition of the God Bless the USA Bible that is made in China, and available for $99.99. That is the State of the Union. OK?"

JK Live also provided a pretty good comic send-up of Gov. Gavin Newsome, so I guess the Fairness Doctrine is back? A little. The featured #SOTU reel I was looking for was not included, but I did remember the punch line: "MONEY, MONEY, MONEY."

The accusation-is-confession filter on troothed remarks from our imposter syndrome-riddled president Spanky:

Low IQ, screaming uncontrollably, LUNATIC, mentally deranged and sick, who frankly looks like he should be institutionalized. A Crooked and Corrupt "politician," so bad for our Country, seriously CRIMINAL!

One wag noted that TCM's (was it?) counterprogramming Tuesday night was the 1944 version of Gaslight, which I might have watched if I didn't have a good book at hand.

25.Feb.2026

View from the heartland

The cross-street neighbors' dogs guard their turf religiously, barking at me with enthusiasm when I come out the house (only when their people are away). Today, when I went out to put our new flag up, the gift of a handy seamster friend, I realized they hear our front door opening before they can see it, or me, through out front forest.

At first, they annoyed me, but I've come to appreciation, good dogs both. Better to have them barking than be taken by surprise, eh?

I considered the possibiity of contacting our three members of Congress before the State of the Union, but their skill at blunting pointed questions with sluggish boilerplate returns pre-moots the effort. Will you push back on the corruption, the betrayal, the perversion, or are you just going to stand and applaud like trained monkeys? was the question I had in mind; truly a rhetorical one, given that the answer was #sotuBINGO well-known in advance.

I'm in the middle of a really good, inspirational read, William Least Heat-Moon's turn-of-the millennium "River-Horse," down to the short stretch of the Mississippi in flood, up to St. Louis, and into the lower Missouri, in its flood. It was an engaging way to spend the evening, out of ear-shot of the current barking madness.

Continuing the story this morning, near the author's birthplace, in "The Dream Lines of Thomas Jefferson," he relates the story from the fall of 1845, when "a roomful of London preachers — 'black coats' — [were pressing the natives] to take up the white man's vision of the sole way to salvation." The translated response of Chief White Cloud's war chieftan Neu-mon-ya, "Walking Rain," "who had puffed hard on his long pipe throughout the lecturing," and who "stood and spoke carefully so the translator could get it right:"

"My friends, you have told us that the Son of the Great Spirit was on earth and that he was killed by white men and that the Great Spirit sent him here to get killed. Now we cannot understand all this. This may be necessary for white people, but the red men we think have not yet got to be so wicked as to require that. If it was necessary that the Son of the Great Spirit should be killed for white people, it may be necessary for for them to believe all this. My friends, you speak of the good book that you have in your hand; we have many of these in our village; we are told that all your words about the Son of the Great Spirit are printed in that book. And if we learn to read it, it will make good people of us. I would now ask why it don't make good people of the pale-faces living all around us? They can all read the good book, and they can understand all that the black-coats say, and still we find they are not so honest and so good a people as ours. This we are sure of. Such is the case in the country about us, but here we have no doubt but the white people who have so many to preach and so many books to read are all honest and good. In our country the white people have two faces, and their tongues branch in different ways. We know that this displeases the Great Spirit, and we do not wish to teach it to our children."

24.Feb.2026

An American rip-off the likes of which we've never seen before

You've surely heard—and seen confirmed—that every accusation is a confession by now, and in the petulant Sturm und Drang of Kommander Kaos' howling response to last week's Supreme Smackdown, "Ripped Off" is heavily featured. Turning up the volume to 11 to hide the fact that tariffs are a consumption tax, paid by we, the consumers, not by foreign nations with whom we have had beneficial trade ever since they were foreign.

Heather Cox Richardson boils down the news for us, after thug (I, too, shall "be using lower case letters for a while based on a complete lack of respect!") responded to the soupçon of Supreme accountability by shouting TEN PERCENT ON EVERYONE and when that kind of thudded Friday, MAKE IT FIFTEEN and oh by the way he claimed that he could “DO ABSOLUTELY ‘TERRIBLE’ THINGS TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES” and that the court has approved other tariffs that “CAN ALL BE USED IN A MUCH MORE POWERFUL AND OBNOXIOUS WAY, WITH LEGAL CERTAINTY, THAN THE TARIFFS AS INITIALLY USED.”

It's not easy to parse the demented raving of thug, but suffice to say that his and Stephen Miller's subtext is YOU SHOULD HAVE LET ME HAVE MY WAY BECAUSE NOW I WILL HURT YOU EVEN MORE.

On the way to, uh, making America grate ever more. Thug will certainly test and drag out every attempt at holding him the least bit accountable for the havoc he unleashes as cover for his and his spawn's looting spree. Do you remember in December, a few short months ago, when "according to multiple reports," wrote Radley Balko in Mother Jones. Thug was

"about to order the government to pay him “damages” for the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago mansion and for special prosecutor Jack Smith’s two investigations of him—one for stealing, hoarding, and improperly sharing classified documents, and the other for Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. He’s going to pay himself $230 million"

Balko notes that's more than the state of Texas paid 375 people over a decade and a half for wrongful imprisonment. (Only 97 received compensation; "Collectively, those 97 people spent more than 1,200 years in prison. The state paid them just under $156 million, or an average of about $130,000 per person per year behind bars.")

Judge Aileen "Loose" Cannon's festoon of unmeritorious decision-making covering thug's ass for interfering in the 2020 election, and for stealing government documents has now held up the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith's "Part 2" details of thug criming for more than a year, and now she's decreed "permanently," in her response to "unopposed motions" that speak sidebar volumes of the Department f.k.a. "Justice" being captured and corrupted by thug.

Joyce Vance breaks it down in detail. My shorter conclusion screams in all caps: HE WOULDN'T BE WORKING SO BLOODY HARD FOR SO BLOODY LONG TO BURY IT IF IT WEREN'T BLOODY DAMNING.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) reports on SOME of (!) thug's "staggering and unprecedented" corruption and conflicts of interest in his second term, beggaring the penny ante DC hotel's emoluments grift. 22 thug-branded projects are being developed around the world, "more than tripling the number of Trump properties abroad."

The report that thug Org fleeced Americans for $1.7 billion in his first term flitted by 4 years ago November while we were still reeling from that fleecing, and the pandemic. A couple hundred $million here, a couple $billion there, it adds up after a while. But now that there the DOJ is fully cuckolded, thug has multiples of $10 billion on his mind.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-sues-irs-treasury-department-10-billion-leaked-tax-records-rcna256626 He and his family crime organization filed a lawsuit (with thug "in his personal capacity) in federal court in Miami (hoping? Expecting to have Aileen Cannon assigned to it?) asking for $10 billion because an IRS contractor leaked some of their tax returns.

It's like the definition of chutzpah, the kid who killed his parents pleading for mercy "because I'm an orphan!" In this case, the "reputational and financial harm, [and] public embarrassment" they feel from exposure of their cooking the books so well they piad jack-squat in taxes. $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.

Conflict of interest much? Nah. Thug said "in October that he would be the one to approve the payout and said, "It's awfully strange to make a decision where I'm paying myself."

Yes. Awfully strange to steal $10 billion from taxpayers in plain sight. He also said at the time that he would give the money away to charities or "to the White House while we restore the White House." ("Restore" after he took a wrecking ball to the whole East Wing.) Are those pigs flying that I see? Charity, seriously?

Then there's the $10 billion more from taxpayers for the "Board of Peace," "essentially a slush fund he controls," Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan chipping in $7 billion more, all under the watchful eye of its "Chairman for Life."

If, "After all, the chief business of the American people is business," and we are "profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world" as Calvin Coolidge said a hundred and one years ago, how's all that working out?

On Sunday the head of the international trade committee in the European Parliament, Bernd Lange, posted: “Pure tariff chaos on the part of the US government. No one can make any sense of it anymore—just open questions and growing uncertainty for the [European Union] and other US trading partners.” Lange noted that it is unclear if the United States will adhere to its trade deals, “or even be able to at all.” He proposed pausing the process of approving the E.U.’s trade deal with the U.S. “until we have a comprehensive legal assessment & clear commitments from the US side.” [Yesterday] morning, the European Parliament agreed.

23.Feb.2026

Tighty Whitey

"Mister" seems a bit excessive an honorific for Jeremy Carl at this point, but OK, since thug nominated you for a top post at the State Department, tell us about this "erasure of white culture" in your fever dream?

Trump nominated a legit white nationalist to a top post at the State Department. I asked him some basic questions about his belief in the “erasure of white culture”. Watch this embarrassing, fumbling answer. Like he has never before been asked to explain his views.

[image or embed]

— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 2:15 PM

Church! (The existence of something other than White Church an erasure?) "Food ways." Damn, you can hardly find a hamburger in Montana anymore, amirite sir? And music! Bad Bunny hurt his his fee-fees with that Super Bowl halftime show he couldn't understand.

His c.v. is a pinball machine of privilege (and who knows, accomplishment?): rebranding his Jewish background with Presbyterianism, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, the Hoover Institution, a posting to India, and now the Claremont Institue, and a book. The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, praised by the estimable gaggle of Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, Dinesh D’Souza, and Christopher Rufo.

He wrote a bloody book about it (or did someone write it for him?), and shows up for a confirmation hearing to be stumped by a direct question about what his gripe is? Oh yes, he's ripe to join the kakistocracy. The SoBrief outline of the book ends with "A Call to Action":

"To combat this trend, white Americans must organize politically, speak out against anti-white discrimination, and demand equal treatment under the law."

Organize politically! Brilliant! I will say that I would dearly love to have the orange thug and his bleached rainbow of lickspittles given "equal treatment under the law" for their cavalcade of crimes.

But wait, there's more! Carl has a pathetic "victim" statement that The Spectator was unkind enough to run for him.

There were questions about his writing, oh my gosh, the "many controversial topics related to race relations and culture that, what, he thought should peak for themselves? The one thing missing from his pity party is a sad trombone background track.

21.Feb.2026

Outsourcing intelligence

The bubbling news roil and a rare dip into LinkedIn landed me on Liza Long's substack blog, and The AI Easy Button=AI Slop. "How Do We Teach Students to Think in the Age of Abundant Language?"

"Abundant language" catches the eye. My own accumulation tends to be more than I can follow, as my enthusiasm for writing outstrips my capacity for organization most days. This here 26 year thread of observations, pithy commentary and more or less durable links to... more abundant language. Long writes:

"Right now, we are using the most powerful cognitive tool of our lifetime as an easy button. We are generating discussion posts, blog drafts, executive summaries, and five-paragraph essays at industrial scale. The output is fluent. It is grammatically sound. It checks the boxes on the (probably AI generated) rubrics. It is also, very often, profoundly forgettable."

I'm on the outside looking in, not "using the most powerful cognitive tool of [my] lifetime," etc. I have the luxury of not having an external motivation to generate anything, let alone on an industrial scale. (Already been there, done that, retired from it.) My jury is still out on fluency, grammatical soundness and ticked boxes, and so the core competency of competence.

"Unfortunately, our entire higher education system relies on assessments that use competence with language as a proxy for thinking. Fluency has traditionally functioned as a gatekeeping mechanism. If you could produce clear, structured prose, clearly, you could think.

Now language is cheap and abundant. Anyone with a prompt can generate 1,000 words in an instant."

Extruding language, no less. (I'm reminded of my old work buddy Darrel Bloomquist brilliantly and succinctly explaining what "extrusion" was by referring to a certain bodily process.) The goal—that essays only can only approximately measure progress toward—has always been critical thinking. Ever "the scarce resource." And this, with my emphasis added:

"Most of us are not very good at problem formulation. Our education system trains students to answer questions, not to design them. We hand them prompts and rubrics and ask them to reverse-engineer our expectations. We reward compliance with better grammar. Then we act surprised when, given a machine that produces fluent prose on demand, they outsource the entire task. That’s on us, not on them. If the writing task is boring, expect AI to do it."

I'm sure I'm not swimming in as much AI slop as an educator is at the moment, but I get it, every time I see one of those "new faces" on Facebook with a long post that grabs attention and goes tl;dr in the first scroll down. I can't imagine how horrible it would be to have to grade a classful of those on a weekend.

I did have the benefit of a very thoughtful mentor in my first go at college. His skill at gauging student's comprehension with well-designed tests grabbed my attention, and then I had the chance to do it myself as one of his lab teaching assistants. What I wrote for my farewell to him remains joyous aspiration:

"His enthusiasm and wonder were contagious. He loved to pose questions as a lure to learning, and I will always remember the twinkle in his eye when he saw someone take the bait."

20.Feb.2026

You may have to swim for it

Jon Ossoff made it onto the last days of Stephen Colbert's The Late Show, and by way of exhortation, and encouragement, said "We have the power to right the ship. Nobody is gonna do it for us."

It's a bit off topic (from losing our Republic, and the present-day shit-show, for lack of a better term), but my mind jumped back to that afternoon, not quite 50 years ago, on (and then in) Lake Pend O'Reille when our "ship" had first capsized, and then turned turtle. It was cool and windy, and the water was unwelcoming, and thanks to my sailing instructor overconfidence (and excessive concern for "room to maneuver"), we were out in the big middle of the large end of the lake, more than a mile and a half to the nearest dry land. Standing on the hull of our anti-righted ship, rolling in the lake chop, noting the freshening breeze and darkening sky, and the absence of anyone near us to come to our rescue. No Dick Tracy two-way wrist radio, cellphone or signal flare between us.

In order to get my Heavy Weather license from the UW Hoofers, I'd had to deliberately capsize a boat, right it, and get back to the launch. After they'd hired me on as an instructor, I would ride along with students and help them learn how to do all the sailing things, with the confidence that the worst thing that might happen is that we capsize, and I'd been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale, right?

Our 16 foot day-sailer was not quite the same as the Tech dinghy I'd learned and instructed in, but I assumed my experience would apply in the unlikely event we had trouble. I'd even asked the rental guy how it would be for righting if it should capsize, and he assured me it would be ok.

But it was not. Getting in the water and pulling and pushing on the centerboard to get the boat back from turtled to "just" capsized, and then getting it righted, the wind blew it right over, and it would go turtle again. After a few attempts, getting colder after each one, we discussed alternatives. Standing out there waiting for someone to notice us did not seem good enough. We agreed that the best course of action was for the stronger swimmer to swim for shore and get help. More than a mile and a half away.

My girlfriend was the (much) stronger swimmer of the two of us, and off she went, while I danced on the white hull of a sailboat in whitecapping chop in the middle of a big lake. It was a long, fraught wait, but a couple hours (it must have been!) later, a rescue boat came out and saved our day.

Sometimes, you need a plan B.

19.Feb.2026

The 5% haircut

Up over the transom, I heard that Bernie Sanders hosted a rally in Los Angeles to support a proposed tax on very wealthy Californians. Will there be space in the crowded California ballot in November for a measure to require about 200 residents with a net worth beyond $1.1 billion to pay a one-time tax equal to 5 percent of their assets?

Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, representing employees at private hospitals, including cooks and janitors is gathering signatures for their initiative “2026 Billionaire Tax Act.” The NY Times reports the proposal "has set off a feverish debate" and "plenty of confusion." Which is to say chaff from the couple hundred targets with plenty to spend to oppose it. (Peter Thiel has already chipped in $3 million of his walking around money.) In addition to the "business leaders and crypto executives," there's California’s Governor Gavin Newsom. Opponents "argue that the measure would stifle innovation." And drive away billionaires.

Really?

"The initiative would require Californians with a net worth beyond $1.1 billion to pay a one-time tax equal to 5 percent of their assets, while those worth between $1 billion and $1.1 billion would pay a smaller percentage. It would apply retroactively to anyone who was living in California as of Jan. 1, 2026, and taxpayers could spread their payments across five years starting in 2027."

I have no idea what's like to have a net worth in the three comma club, but arithmetic says that a thousand $millions is a LOT of money, and while I'm sure our billionaires put in some hard work, there aren't enough hours in the day to work that hard, you know? There are a lot of low-paid, overworked minions toiling in the shadows of the super-rich.

Who, if they had to pay 5% of their assets over $1,100,000,000 would still be billionaires, you know? They could save or invest or spend tens of $millions every year, forever. Or splurge at $3 million A DAY (give or take) FOR TEN YEARS RUNNING.

On the, ah, plus side, the opposition campaign gets counted as GDP, too? Lots of work for signature gatherers this year, with "a clipboard thick with 14 proposed ballot measures," pro and con. The promise of the Golden State has "An opposition campaign committee with ties to the crypto industry, called Golden State Promise, officially formed on Friday."

"It was expected to report this week $10 million in donations, including $5 million from Chris Larsen, a founder of the cryptocurrency company Ripple." There's a "pitch deck," of course.

“Messaging is everything,” the deck says. “Billionaires CANNOT be the focus or face of an opposition campaign.”

11.Feb.2026

These Truths

Having finished Jill Lepore's (2018) compelling history of the United States, "These Truths," over the course of the last four weeks, I want a suitably raving summary as endorsement. (And I see from that Wikipedia page, the Commons has provided a sturdy scaffold for us.) She frames her four four-chapter parts with an introduction, "The Question Stated," and an epilogue, "The Question Addressed." (Followed by 88 pages of Notes I didn't dig into.) Much tidier than the actual subject matter, which runs from 1492 ("The Nature of the Past") to 2016, "America, Disrupted." I expect the histories to come will recognize her final year as the beginning of the end of this great experiment. From the synopsis on Wikipedia (emphasis added):

"The idea of truth itself is a core theme of the book: Lepore traces how a number of technological and political forces—including newspapers, mass media, propaganda, polling, and political consulting—have fundamentally altered the way that Americans define and understand what is true, ultimately eroding a shared understanding of empirical truth. The book also foregrounds the country's histories of slavery and systemic racism, demonstrating how these injustices have distorted and undermined America's commitment to its founding truths."

Rather than filleting and drying dead leaves of our distant past, Lepore brings it to life, one day at the end of October, 1787,

"when readers of a newspaper called the New-York Packet found on the front page an advertisement for an almanac that came bound with tables predicting the 'Rising and Setting of the Sun,' the 'Judgment of the Weather,' the 'Length of Days and Nights,' and, as a bonus, something entirely new: the Constitution of the United States, forty-four hundred words tha tattempted to chart the motions of the branches of government and the separation of their powers as if they these were matters of physics, like the transit of the sun and moon and the comings and goings of the tides."

What was the question again? That's the trouble with an episodic, dense read over weeks while the maelstrom of dismantling this republic proceeds apace. But I fished it out of the Introduction at the bottom of page xvii, in Alexander Hamilton's words from 1787: wondering "whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."

Back in the day, it seemed reasonable (!) to build an outline on "Facts, knowledge, experience, proof." René Descartes does not make a personal appearance in Lepore's account, but there he is, "[a]round the seventeeth century" square in the middle of that, 1596-1650, using those building blocks to form "natural history" on a foundation of epistemology and mathematics, then to "astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology." A century later "they were applied to history and to politics, too."

My memory of Descartes is intertwined with the motes of dust dancing in the afternoon sunlight invading the dark wooden interior of Bascom Hall half a century ago, the hill of academia facing the Wisconsin Capitol over an isthmus between lakes left after glaciers retreated, artfully mapped out as part of a shady real estate deal.

The verdict of history is never final, the wheel is still in spin, and there's no telling who it will be naming, eh. Back at our inception, Lepore has the wonderful vignette of Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence with "these truths sacred & undeniable," and Benjamin Franklin's revision to "self-evident."

"This was more than a quibble. Truths that are sacred and undeniable are God-given and divine, the stuff of religion. Truths that are self-evident are laws of nature, empirical and observable, the stuff of science. This divide has nearly rent the Republic apart."

10.Feb.2026

Vexacious Vexillology II (or III)

Some of our Idaho legislators like to champion "small government" and each year they seem to set that bar lower. They're find time in their busy sessions to try to preempt local government powers that irk them for one reason or another.

After last year's attempt to outlaw flags they don't like was foiled by the Boise City Council making the Pride flag (they've been flying for 10 years) "official," the far-right want to take another whack at us with a bill from Rep. Ted Hill (R-Eagle) to "create fines for government entities that violate a recent state law that banned state and local government entities from flying any flags other than official domestic government and military flags." Just in case you weren't sure, Hill said the bill was targeted at the city of Boise.

The Idaho Capital Sun reports that Rep. Bruce Skaug from Nampa "proposed introducing the bill but removing the ban on government entities flying [other?] city and county flags. The committee widely supported Skaug’s motion on a 12-2 vote, just after a vote to introduce the bill but tweak it to ban flying other states’ flags failed on a 7-7 tie vote."

HB538 is out of the House State Affairs committee, but after the admendment, it sounds like they're not sure what it will do, and may need to work on it some more. A selection of comments under the Lewiston Tribune's Facebook post on the bill:

"I'm glad they're over there spending their time on the issues that really matter"

"Small government at its finest"

"Well that will help with inflation. Nice work guys. Way to focus on the important things while we all go broke paying for your annual Boise vacation"

Boise Dev has coverage of the contentious committee hearing for another flag bill, HB561 with Boise Mayor's Lauren McLean testifying, and responding to questions, starting with Rep. Skaug, who wanted her to explain what L, G, B, T, and Q stand for. He's not as ignorant as he pretends to be. "Isn't there a plus in there?" And "what does the Trans stand for?"

title="My copy of Green Bean's FB photo is dated Oct. 2017">

Later on, Rep. Heather "Green bean" Scott from the far north piped up to say she's "curious" (we'll stipulate that much) "if you're willing to break a law if you don't agree with it?" That didn't get any traction. But it does remind us of Scott's infamous use of the Confederate battle flag in her campaign to get elected to the legislature. She's been in the flag-waving business a while now.

Chairman Brent Crane kept working it, what if a city wants to fly "a pro-Israeli flag, or a Nazi flag?" The Mayor didn't nibble on that extreme hypothetical, any more than she did on Crane's brother Jaron trolling for a "heterosexual flag."

9.Feb.2026

Post-game

Since we have family in Washington State, and definitely favored the Seahawks over that New England team, I was a little interested in one last football game, and also to see the halftime extravaganza from a superstar who was not on my radar before, you know. Yay for the 'Hawks, kinda boo for the lopsided game, and needing to consult others about the halftime show, given my weak Spanish and current pop culture memage.

First thing I learned while wandering on Mastodon this AM was tagged a "halftime spoiler" 12h ago, saying the set-up for the parade of American countries was "God bless America." Nice. (Dear God, please also bless the other half of our beautiful planet, and all its waters and all your creatures as well.)

I don't suspect I know anyone who watched the "alternative show," assuming that actually happened, but Hunter Walker's big-picture post has a nice summary:

"There is a major political organization allied with the president that got so mad a Latino artist was tapped to play at the Super Bowl they made a whole alternative show. We should all take a moment to reflect on that. It is so blatantly racist."

We did watch a little bit of Green Day's pre-game show which seemed, idk, but intent on zipping ahead to the game, it didn't hold my interest. And we did see the Levi's® Stadium reader-chyron saying THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE, which we understand. Brian Jopek noted it "made MAGA heads explode that much more" (for their song "American Idiot"), and quoted Brendan Nørth (as he styles himself where he can), screen-capped from a social medium with an image of Bad Bunny and an armload of Grammys, saying:

"This entire game is a statement, Green Day singing 'American Idiot' and 'Holiday,' Brandi Carlile (a queer artist and activist) singing 'America the Beautiful," and Bad Bunny (a Spanish speaking American citizen) performing the halftime show. No direct political speeches are necessary to deliver the message that America is strongest when we embrace our diversity instead of fearing it.

Connected only by my random walk throught the intertubes this morning, there are two YouTube shorts I saw (which I guess play better on a phone than a desktop, but either way). First, Vox's take on a study of implicit bias in preschool ("When teachers expect misbehavior, who are they watching?").

Here's the Sept. 28, 2016 paper from the Yale Child Study Center: Do Early Educators’ Implicit Biases Regarding Sex and Race Relate to Behavior Expectations and Recommendations of Preschool Expulsions and Suspensions? NPR covered it back in the day (before the 2016 election), in an easier-reading overview.

And secondly, Jon Stewart's message to Thug, on the disconnect between pardoning J6 protesters and the MAGA condemnation of Renee Good, after she was murdered by ICE's Jonathan Ross.

If you're ready for a longer read (which I'm not, quite, yet), consider Alexander Karn's piece for Mother Jones, Can He Really Do That? Black History Month in the Age of Trump; "A celebration is acceptable only when it becomes a sanitized MAGA vision of America." ICYMI, here's how Thug kicked off Black History Month this year:

“As president, I proclaim that ‘black history’ is not distinct from American history—rather, the history of black Americans is an indispensable chapter in our grand American story.”

All in the shadow of his Jan. 20, 2025 kick-off day order, terminating “illegal” Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility offices and initiatives across all agencies of the federal government, because we're a pure meritocracy now. (Note: ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.)

7.Feb.2026

Meanwhile, in quasi-economics news

In keeping with the durable #ETTD meme, Crypto Takes a Deep Slide Despite Thug’s Support. Gee, who could have seen that coming?

Looking at the detailed chart (I have no reason to pay attention to), I see the election of Thug 2.0 in 2024 started a steep rise, from a year burbling in the $60,000s for a BTC range, all the way up into six digits in December, and then peaking at almost $110k on Inauguration Day, 2025. It had its downs (to 75k last April) and ups (to over 126k in October), dropped to a "support level" around 90k and big down volume this month this month has it below 70k again. Back to where it was before the end of Biden's term.

Says there, "the stock prices of major crypto firms have plummeted," thanks to "leverage" strategies. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

"Mr. Trump promised to end a regulatory crackdown on crypto and created a crypto empire of his own, with Trump-branded digital coins and a crypto start-up run by his sons. Some investors predicted that Bitcoin would soon surge even higher, reaching $250,000 within a year."

Instead, "Bitcoin is trading at less than $64,000," nearly 50% off its peak in October, and "two other top coins, Ether and Solana, are both down more than 30% over the past week."

The Rubicon

Heather Cox Richardson's February 6, 2026 Letter from an American is a mind-blowing catch-up. Every day, the swamp gets deeper. I hadn't seen the news that Thug admitted he—not "a staffer" as his North Korean spokeswoman was told to say—posted that racist image himself. Would he apologize, a reporter asked? “No, I didn’t make a mistake.” More shades of McCarthy, and the Roy Cohn Prime Directive wrapped around Thug's amygdala.

"While the post exhibited both the president’s vile racism and his failing impulse control, it also seems to have been an attempt to use racism to break the growing coalition against him."

The run-down continues through ICE/CBP/DHS criming, a judge calling out the "detain first and then sort out lawful authority later" later, as the DOJ is stretched to the breaking point keeping up with the paramilitary's domestic terrorism.

And measles. Aided and abetted by the undead worm in RFK Jr's brain. And the metastasizing revelations in the Epstein files, even after a thousand FBI agents—stretched to the breaking point, one imagines—combed through them trying to remove traces of Thug.

Oh, and a warning of “a widespread collapse of American agriculture and our rural communities,” is that going to be important at all? If Team Thug can rig the midterm election, everything will be coming up roses?

The bottomless pit of Thug's need for adulation has not been satisfied by giant building banners, tearing down the East Wing of the White House for the ballroom of his dreams, or destroying the Kennedy Center. He's trying to deal with Chuck Schumer to have New York's Penn Station and DC's Dulles Airport named after him too?! You couldn't make this up.

Props to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for calling out our "unhinged bottom feeder" directly. Since I logged into Instagram to catch that link (and remind myself how much I dislike almost all of the Instagram UI), I stuck around long enough to see a reel (!) from HCR herself:

"This is the moment, at which it becomes too late for people to say 'oh, I didn't know', 'I didn't know what was gonna happen'..."

The murders, and the kidnapping, you know.

"It is no longer possible for people to say 'I believe in law and order and so I support Donald Trump'....

The Republicans could stop this tonight. If they wanted to. Elected Republicans could stop this tonight.

America in Rupture

Anne Applebaum & Preet Bharara lament our current timeline. What she said, to open:

"I think the thing that worries me the most is this administration's profound disregard for the law, and whether that's in allowing federal agents working for or with ICE to have impunity, to be able to attack people and kill people with apparently no responsibility, no possibility of investigating them... Trump and his family's willingness to accept all kinds of conflicts of interest, and even direct payments into Trump companies, things that would have benn unthinkable in any other adminstration, and actually are still unthinkable in most democracies..."

Accountability has always been too rare; now we have anti-accountability, enabled by the subversion of legal process, first; the failure of the electorate to realize they were being played by a criminal and a crime family desperate to avoid the consequences of their bad acts; and then the subversion of the Department of Justice itself. ICYMI, Wikipedia remembers:

"On January 20, 2025, during the first day of his second term, United States president Donald Trump granted blanket clemency to all people, nearly 1,600, convicted of or awaiting trial or sentencing for offenses related to the January 6 United States Capitol attack that occurred near the end of his first presidential term. Most of them received full pardons, while the sentences of 14 members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys were commuted. More than 600 rioters had been convicted of or pleaded guilty to assault of or obstructing law enforcement officers and 170 of using a deadly weapon."

That page also has a growing catalog of the "multiple January 6 defendants [who] have been involved in additional crimes before or after being pardoned, including homicide, burglary, theft, stalking, child pornography, sexual assault on minors, and driving under the influence." In our new abnormal, victims of murder are slandered before their corpses are cold.

We await the moment when the fog of Thug evaporates in the sort of righteous indignation that Army counsel Joseph Welch delivered to Joe McCarthy: "Senator; you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

He didn't; after being censured by a 67-22 vote of his Senate colleagues, McCarthy continued his anti-communist rants, and poisoned himself with alcohol, dying of hepatitis two and a half years later, at the age of 48.

Thug isn't going what you could call "strong," but his pinnacle of thuggishness is rounding out an ugly decade, with a larger cabal of enablers than ever. Prime (and essential) among them, the Republicans in Congress, and the half dozen Supreme Court justices bent an dabbling with autocracy.

That cabal, those sycophants, and the steadfast rump of MAGA anchoring the sinking opinion poles are "living within a lie," as Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney recounted for the denizens of this year's World Economic Forum in Devos, citing The Power of the Powerless from Václav Havel.

"The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign [Workers of the World Unite!], the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down."

The "rules-based international order" relied on predictability, first of all.

"We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

"This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

"So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

"This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition."

He describes "plan B" at some length, and what could be summarized in wisdom-of-the-internet terms as "route around damage." The two-bullet point summary of Carney's address at the top of the transcript:

• Carney emphasized the end of the rules-based international order and outlined how Canada was adapting by building strategic autonomy while maintaining values like human rights and sovereignty.
• The Canadian PM called for middle powers, such as his own, to work together to counter the rise of hard power and the great power rivalry, in order to build a more cooperative, resilient world.

The whole thing is worth a careful read. And while you read, consider Thug's inarticulate word salad bar, open to any and every occasion, and imagine what it would mean to have a leader in full command of his faculties, and able to speak plainly, and honestly, to the whole world.

5.Feb.2026

Get ICE and CBP TF out

Wandering down the endless hallway of my inbox, one of my (free) newsletter subscriptions from... oh, just yesterday, caught my eye. Robert B. Hubbell: The moment of truth for congressional Democrats.

The (much) shorter is similar to that email I sent to our congressperson yesterday: (1) Watch this video. (2) Defund ICE. (I'm sure Lawrence O'Donnell's segment "In Cold Blood" is worth the watch, but I could not get through the ms.now truckload of scripting past having it show me "NOW PLAYING" while it was not playing.)

"The truth is that ICE is so broken, so corrupt, that it must be disbanded and a new agency must be created to replace it. It must be defunded, its ranks cleared of officers caught on tape beating, shooting, tear-gassing, punching, and mocking Americans who are going about their daily lives or exercising their First Amendment rights."

But there are so damn many layers to the problem. It's not just ICE. CBP is the organization with the thugs who executed Alex Pretti and were more intent on counting how many bullet holes they'd put in him than checking to see if he had a pulse.

"The half-measures and window-dressing currently being shopped by Chuck Schumer are an insult to the memories of those killed and brutalized by ICE. They are the rock-bottom, bare minimum first steps toward meaningful reform. Members of ICE will continue their brutal terror even with body cameras and without masks. They don’t care if they are filmed committing illegal acts—because they have been told Trump will protect them, and they have been recruited precisely because they don’t care....

"So, a word to congressional Democrats: Steel yourselves. We will either live in a society with a roving paramilitary that is executing citizens on the streets or not. It is up to you. For once in your lives, do the right thing—something that will be hard, possibly unpopular, and may affect your fundraising.

"Congressional Democrats gave away most of their leverage by allowing the five appropriations bills to pass without a fight. They told us they would extract concessions when the DHS bill is put to a vote. It is the moment of truth for congressional Democrats. Don’t tell us who you are or what you believe. Show us."

Honored in the breach

Notice in email this morning from "Substack Standards & Enforcement," signed by the CEO himself. Subject "Notice of Data Breach." It's a bit sketchy, but someone accessed "limited user data without permission" last October, with assurance that they didn't get into credit card numbers or passwords. (But you know, how do we know?) It ends with a personal, folksy closing and apology. "This sucks. I'm sorry. We will work very hard to make sure it does happen again." The preceding content has three headings for five sentences, ending with:

"What you can do. We do not have evidence that this information is being misused, but we encourage you to take extra caution with any emails you receive that may be suspicious."

10-4 on that, good buddy. Extra caution is the order of the day. Completely unrelated (one presumes), scrubbing the spam bucket this morning, one of the dodgy items had a subject:

Dear: Bill status confirmed

That's also the internal salutation, and the headline. (How did they know my name was Bill?) It's my "confirmation" that my Webroot Security subscription has been processed and "a total of USD373.33 has been charged for your 36 Months subscription period." Also, quixotically, "Quantity: 2x."

4.Feb.2026

Mike Simpson, defender of fascism and corruption

The Idaho Capital Sun has guest commentary from long-time Idaho journalist Rod Gramer: Have we lost the Idaho we knew and loved? Many of the signs are there.

"Our politics have moved from our historic conservatism to a kind of radicalism that is hardly recognizable. The biggest spenders on lobbying and political campaigns are not from Idaho, but from out-of-state billionaires. Once there was a consensus that public education was a fundamental value – now our schools are threatened by privatization. In northern Idaho survivalists are building the “American Redoubt,” a highly armed last refuge against what they consider the coming Armageddon. A movement is afoot by a Christian nationalist church to take over the city of Moscow....

"And while Donald Trump’s approval ratings are tanking, including in Republican states, the president’s popularity in Idaho has not slipped. Depending upon which report you read, Idahoans approve of Trump by 58 percent to 66 percent. This despite the president attacking our country’s longest and most loyal allies, coddling dictators like Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and declaring revengeful wars on any state that didn’t vote for him."

He goes on to lament two proponents of "Idaho's best conservative, common-sense political" values, Gov. Brad Little and Congressman Mike Simpson, losing their way in service to Thug.

Gramer provided a pull quote from and a link to Mike Simpson's guest opinion in the Idaho State Journal and its casual libel of anyone non-MAGA as being "left-wing agitators." What Gramer said, and yes, what we have witnessed as well:

"I don’t know about the people in Minneapolis, but here in Idaho I’ve seen grandmothers and grandfathers, young couples pushing strollers, students, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, businessmen and women, cowboys on horses and patriotic Idahoans protesting the authoritarian actions of our president who as recently as last week said we need a “dictator” in America."

So, I wrote a(n undoubtedly tl;dr) letter to our Congressman. It's about the same length as his guest opinion piece, but somehow I doubt he'll give it as much attention as I gave his. I do wish he'd watch that 7 minute video I linked, but I don't expect that, either. Here it is, with hyperlinks brought in-line, and some emphasis Simpson's plain text email form does not admit:

Dear Congressman Simpson:

I read your Jan. 24, 2026 opinion in the Idaho State Journal. You made a number of claims about crime statistics, and I'm interested in what sources you have for those.

You mention that "violent crime increased, rapes, assaults, and murders rose, and fentanyl overdoses skyrocketed," apparently all during the Biden administration? The 10 year timelines for aggravated assault, homicide, rape, and robbery that I see on the FBI Crime Data Explorer show a long-term downward trend, and perhaps some improvement in the past year, but it's hard to know what to believe from the FBI now that so many professionals have been purged and replaced with people who are loyal to Donald Trump over the Constitution.

At a minimum, your claim that "an unprecedented crisis unfolded" seems hyperbolic, so please share what you know.

At the end of your opinion, you summarize that "The contrast between the brave men and women protecting our communities and the agitators vilifying them while defending criminals could not be clearer."

This is a simplistic caricature of what is happening in this country, as the current administration carries out a campaign of violent retribution against a selection of its political enemies, with Stephen Miller empowered to label anyone who objects as a "domestic terrorist" and thereby unqualified to have consitutional rights.

Thank you for not throwing out the "domestic terrorist" label, at least? But your "agitators" is not much better.

I don't imagine you attended the public forum held yesterday (Feb. 3) by your Democrat colleagues to examine the Department of Homeland Security’s use of excessive force.

The PBS Newshour has the 7 minute clip of Ms. Aliya Rahman's testimony to that forum, and I beg of you to take the time to give it your attention.

Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen Aliya Rahman describes being detained by ICE

Your claims that "the media is trying to demonize our brave Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers for doing their job and protecting our communities," and that "the insanity that has transpired over the last few weeks is directly attributable to the media's influence and its so-called coverage" are not responsive to facts on the ground.

We have witnessed the cold-blooded murder of US citizens, the violations of 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendment rights. We have witnessed masked, poorly trained, and often lawless paramilitary squads attacking American cities.

And now we witness you, a member of the House of Representative casually libel all protestors as "left-wing agitators" who "defend child sex offenders, drug traffickers, murderers, and other violent criminals simply because they oppose a president who is actually enforcing the law."

And you repeat, "these individuals are not protesters. They are agitators."

Having attended some protests myself, I know that what you say is false. The concern is not "actually enforcing the law," but the utter LAWLESSNESS of much of what the Trump administration is doing. But the courts can't keep up with the myriad cases to right the wrongs being perpetrated.

Meanwhile, the razor-slim Republican majorities in Congress are protecting our child sex offender in chief, just as they protected him from accountability for his high crimes and misdemeanors during his first term, and just as they protect his lawless corruption in his second term.

Remember when there were questions about the emoluments clause over the Trump Hotel in DC? Those were the good old days. The Nation reports How Trump Became the Biggest Crook in the History of Democracy. Just a brief sample:

"The New Yorker has calculated that Trump’s business deals leveraging his presidency have brought him upwards of $4 billion. On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported on how one particular set of deals, involving World Liberty Financial, has all the earmarks of an open-and-shut bribery case....

"[B]oth Trump and Witkoff want us to believe that the wildly lucrative deals their sons make, which happen to enrich them personally, have nothing to do with their actions as public officials."

Gosh, remember the attacks on Hunter Biden? And President Jimmy Carter putting his peanut farm in a blind trust? And Donald Trump's family businesses making $2.4 billion in his first term? If facts matter at all.

David D. Kirpatrick's detailied reporting in The New Yorker puts the estimate of Trump's second term take at just over $4 billion.

"At the start of Donald Trump’s first term, he promised that he and his family would never do anything that might even be “perceived to be exploitive of office of the Presidency.” By contrast, his second term looks rapacious. He and members of his family have signed a blitz of foreign mega-deals shadowed by conflicts of interest, and they’ve launched at least five different cryptocurrency enterprises, all of which leverage Trump’s status as President to lure buyers or investors. Ethics watchdogs say that no other President has ever so nakedly exploited his position, or on such a scale. Trump recently explained to the Times why he cast aside his former restraint: “I found out that nobody cared.”

We certainly see that you and almost no one in the Republican Party cares enough to do anything about it.

3.Feb.2026

The 2026 election theft in process

At the last meeting of Idaho's District 16 Democrats, our guest speaker was Ada County Trent Tripple. He's a Republican, elected to a county-wide office, said "I'm not a politician, I'm a fighter pilot (with 25 years in the Air Force), I'll shoot straight and tell the truth." That's what you want for someone running a nearly $400 million annual budget, and elections. He said the mission of his department is "to serve, and build trust," with a vision to "Be kind. Be joyful. Be transparent. Our work is public. Be innovative. Focus on what matters the most." For elections, his priorities are (1) Access; (2) Security; (3) Accuracy. In round numbers, we have about 20% absentee voters, 20% early/in-person voters, and 60% voting on election day.

One of Ada County's innovations is a Ballot Verifier that makes available all the images of scanned paper ballots (while protecting voter privacy). Other clerks and states around the nation are taking note, and using the system. (17 states, so far.)

He was upbeat about the work he and his peers are doing to ensure accurate election results. It was a generally upbeat presenation. In response to the current administrations request for voter roll information, they sent JUST NAMES, the same as what public access provides.

That's our local good news. Not so good news, from Popular Information's Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, and Noel Sims: The plot to undermine the 2026 elections.

As usual, Thug's criming is blatant, and (unlike his junior thugs) unmasked. Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections.

"During an extended monologue about immigration on a podcast released on Monday by Dan Bongino, his former deputy F.B.I. director, Mr. Trump called for Republican officials to “take over” voting procedures in 15 states, though he did not name them."

"Fixated" is a pretty good word for the false claims Thug makes, tirelessly "that US elections are rife with fraud, and that Democrats are perpetrating a vast conspiracy to have undocumented immigrants vote and lift the party’s turnout." When it came to proving any of those claims in 2020, he and his crack lawyers failed, spectacularly.

No moment captured it quite as completely as one of his "perfect" phone calls, 5 years and a month ago, after he saw Georgia's Secretary of State on Fox News say that his state's election had been fair and honest and that Trump had lost. Thug called Raffensperger to try to shake him down, "to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have." Four days before he incited the insurrection and attack on Congress. His mind was already going a little garbly there: 11,780 would be 11,780 votes more than he had, and one—just one!—more that he needed to change the result.

Now that the post-purge FBI is working for Thug, and have laid their hands on Georgia's 2020 ballots, he's going to, uh, prove something? In a pig's eye. But the beat goes on. And on. And on.

"The president’s claims of election fraud have been debunked over and over, by both independent reviews and Republican officials.... Last month, he told The Times that he regretted not dispatching the National Guard to seize voting machinery after the 2020 election....

"There is no evidence that a significant number of noncitizens have voted in any American election. A 2024 audit by Georgia’s secretary of state found that just 20 of the 8.2 million people registered to vote in Georgia were not citizens, and only nine had ever voted."

If "ever" was all in 2020, and all nine of those non-citizens had voted for Harris/Walz, Thug would only need, uh, 11,771 votes to be "declared" the winner of the election he lost. 5 years ago. The stink of Loser just won't wash out, you know? In Minnesota, he's a three-time loser, and his despicable and murderous attempt at retribution on Minneapolis will mark him for all history.

Whether he'll face accountability sooner, or later, depends on the 2026 election, and very much on how successful his campaign to steal it turns out to be. In fairness, justice would be better served before he's dead, or completely demented.

Groundhog Day, 2026

The wheel is still in spin

Heather Cox Richardson's Feb. 1, 2026 Letter from an American reminds us of how the Battle Hymn of the Republic came about, and the anniversary of the 13th Amendment. And here, the 50th observance of Black History Month, as Thug's administration "is openly working to replace American multiculturalism with white nationalism." Bookends:

"In 1976, President Gerald Ford officially recognized February 1 as the first day of Black History Month, asking the public to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

"On February 1, 2023, the family of Tyre Nichols laid their 29-year-old son to rest in Memphis, Tennessee. He was so severely beaten by police officers on January 7, allegedly for a traffic violation, that he died three days later."

Joyce Vance's The Week Ahead is a mix of good news and bad news, and a reminder to keep the faith. Thug "is getting weaker. People who refuse to be the country he wants are getting stronger. Don’t let him blind you with his myth."

And Happy birthday to Rebecca Solnit's Meditations on an Emergency blog.

"At the very heart of almost all our crises is a conflict between two worldviews, the worldview in which everything is connected and the world of isolated individualism, of social darwinism and the war of each against each. I call the latter the ideology of isolation.

The zero sum people, and the synergists. Smash and grab vs. Earthlings who recognize our ultimately common destiny.

"[T]this ideology goes beyond separating humans and our actions from nature; as you can see in the current US government, it wants to segregate us through a hierarchy of inequality, in which straight white Christian men are at the top, and in which women are separate from men and don't deserve the same rights, immigrants from US born, white from nonwhite, Christian from non-Christian.

"It is a sad and lonely worldview and one whose most devout believers often seem miserable, angry, and eager to punish and harm. They have in recent years even directly attacked the idea and value of empathy..."

I was thinking about Love vs. Hate at church yesterday, in between singing some amazing songs with my beloved choir. I don't know if love can conquer hate, but it seems amply clear that hate can't drive out hate. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his 1963 book, Strength to Love:

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says "Love your enemies," he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies—or else? The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."

What I am sure of: If you live your life seeking love, you will be happier than if you live it in hate.

raveling

Tom von Alten