The Coming Election (2026)

I know many feel and/or believe that Donny will somehow negate the 2026 election and all others thereafter….I use to doubt he could do it but that was when I was young and naive and his recent statement leaves no room for doubt anymore.

President Trump on Monday called on Republicans in Congress to seize control of elections, which would conflict with how the Constitution assigns that authority. In an interview Monday with podcaster Dan Bongino, Trump again asserted without evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and said the GOP should “take over” elections and “nationalize the voting.” He suggested Republicans should control elections in “at least 15 places” but did not specify which states, the Washington Post reports. “We have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes,” Trump said, per NBC News.

Under the Constitution, state governments set the “Times, Places and Manner” of elections, with Congress able to regulate some aspects. The president is given no role in the process. Trump’s position is a dramatic escalation of his efforts that have included advocating for stricter voting rules and for investigations into what he maintains was election fraud, per NBC News. The FBI searched a Fulton County, Georgia, warehouse containing 2020 ballots and related materials last week, a site central to 2020 election conspiracy theories. A warrant allowed agents to collect paper ballots, machine tapes, digital images from the count, and voter rolls. On Bongino’s program, Trump said he actually won “in a landslide” and predicted “some interesting things” would emerge from Georgia.

The Justice Department under Trump has sued nearly two dozen states, per Politico, for access to their voter registration lists. And he said last month that he regrets not having the National Guard seize voting machines after the 2020 election; courts across the country rejected fraud claims about that vote. During the interview, Trump alleged, again without evidence, that undocumented immigrants voted illegally in 2020. “If Republicans don’t get them out, you will never win another election as a Republican,” he said. The New York Times points out that an audit by Georgia’s secretary of state in 2024, for instance, found that 20 of the 8.2 million people registered to vote in the state were not citizens. Just nine of them had ever cast a ballot.

We cannot expect the Constitution will save us from Donny’s bullshit for he uses the document for toilet paper….he cares nothing for its meaning.

This is what we get when stupid MFers vote….I do not see it getting any better for now and maybe ever.

Surely there is some comment waiting to come forth.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

News Of The Day

Most of my regulars know that I am fighting cancer and my last scans showed a new spot on my left lung so after more scans and a biopsy I met with my doctors yesterday for the news….to tell the truth I was apprehensive with the way things have been going.

The doctor sat me down and announced that the tests came back that it was not another cancer….(whew!)

But of course they want to keep an eye on it for good measures but so far the only one they are concerned with is the original tumor and the good news there is that it is not growing and shrinking ever so damn slowly.

Because of the great news I took my daughter out for lunch at our favorite eatery that is part of my butcher’s new business….the food is excellent and I need that huge burger to celebrate.

I would like to offer my deepest thank you for all my followers that have shown concern on my fight…..I appreciate the concern and the good thoughts.

Now that is out of the way (for now) it is back to the crap that this country is going through thanx to the old wrinkled idiot we have leading the nation.

Thanx again!

chuq

ICE ICE Baby

****I have doctors today starting at 0800 until well after lunch so this will mostly likely be my only offering today.****

There has been much written about ICE especially it’s tactics when it rolls into cities and begins their brand of ‘enforcement’…..some even have compared them to the Brown Shirts or the Gestapo….but is that accurate?

As the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have intensified over the past year, politicians and journalists alike have begun referring to ICE as a “paramilitary force.”

Rep. John Mannion, a New York Democrat, called ICE “a personal paramilitary unit of the president.” Journalist Radley Balko, who wrote a book about how American police forces have been militarized, has argued that President Donald Trump was using the force “the way an authoritarian uses a paramilitary force, to carry out his own personal grudges, to inflict pain and violence, and discomfort on people that he sees as his political enemies.” And New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie characterized ICE as a “virtual secret police” and “paramilitary enforcer of despotic rule.”

All this raises a couple of questions: What are paramilitaries? And is ICE one?

As a government professor who studies policing and state security forces, I believe it’s clear that ICE meets many but not all of the most salient definitions. It’s worth exploring what those are and how the administration’s use of ICE compares with the ways paramilitaries have been deployed in other countries.

The term paramilitary is commonly used in two ways. The first refers to highly militarized police forces, which are an official part of a nation’s security forces. They typically have access to military-grade weaponry and equipment, are highly centralized with a hierarchical command structure, and deploy in large formed units to carry out domestic policing.

https://theconversation.com/ice-not-only-looks-and-acts-like-a-paramilitary-force-it-is-one-and-that-makes-it-harder-to-curb-274580

AS the old saying goes….”if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it must be a duck”….

There are some that are comparing ICE to the Klan….

The country is witnessing the revival of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a white supremacist, far-right hate group in the United States, through ICE and Border Patrol officers terrorizing our communities. The group is infamous for using terrorism, violence, and intimidation to promote white supremacy and oppress minority groups, particularly Black Americans.

The KKK has existed in three distinct iterations and time periods throughout U.S. history, each with similar core beliefs in white nationalism and racial subordination, but also with varying targets and political focuses.

First Klan (Reconstruction Era, (1865-1872): Founded by six Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a social club that quickly evolved into a paramilitary force. Its primary goals were to resist the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies and reestablish white control of Southern governments through violence, lynchings, and intimidation of Black Americans and their white allies.

Second Klan (1915-1944): Revived by William Joseph Simmons near Atlanta, Georgia, this iteration was inspired by the film The Birth of a Nation, which glorified the original Klan. It became a nationwide political force, expanding its hatred to include immigrants, Roman Catholics, Jews, and organized labor, in addition to Black people. The Klan introduced the burning cross as a symbol.

Third Klan (Mid-20th Century-Present): Resurging during the Civil Rights Movement, this iteration continued the use of violence, including bombings of Black churches and schools, to oppose desegregation and civil rights activism.

The archetype of the Third Klan is found in ICE and Border agents, primarily terrorizing and killing people of color with Hispanic-sounding names, immigrants of color, and their white allies.

ICE in Our Communities: The New Ku Klux Klan

That is an interesting take on the events of the past year.

Is all this chaos necessary?

I have said that I thought that this type of situations are what Donny had planned the whole time…..his actions and then the reactions make him look strong.

Can anyone doubt now that Donald Trump and Stephen Miller want chaos in American streets? I submit to you that at this point, there is no other conclusion that may reasonably be drawn. Consider: It was less than three weeks ago that their thuggish agents executed a woman, a U.S. citizen, in cold blood. If for no other reason than the fact that it sparked international controversy, a normal democratically elected government that felt the normal degree of humility toward public and world opinion would have sent out a memo telling their armed agents to go easy for a little while until things cool down. The elected leader would issue the usual calls for calm.

Yet 17 days after the execution of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of an ICE agent, border patrol officers carried out another execution of an American citizen a mere two miles away. Trumpers can carry on all they want about Alex Pretti’s gun—which he was allowed to carry legally because the state’s Republicans decided back in 2003 that passing such a law was a grand idea—but the different videos make it obvious that at the time of his death, Pretti was on the ground, had been disarmed, and posed no mortal threat to anyone. That’s when they put 10 holes in him. With Good, I noted at the time, we could, maybe, bend over backward and grant a smidgen of ambiguity around the first bullet. But there was nothing ambiguous about the second and third ones, fired from point-blank range through an open car window. Likewise, about 10 shots, there is nothing ambiguous. This too was an execution.

https://newrepublic.com/article/205655/trump-ice-chaos-minneapolis-power

This chaos is the vehicle that Donny and his thugs are using to justify martial law….it is that simple.

With the shake up within the group there is new orders from the Biggies….

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Minnesota have been ordered not to “COMMUNICATE OR ENGAGE” with “AGITATORS” during future operations, according to new internal guidance from the agency’s top brass.

The new instructions, circulated on Wednesday and exclusively reviewed by Reuters, also limit ICE activity to immigrants with criminal charges or convictions in a departure from the broad sweeps that have sparked fierce backlash, legal challenges, and street protests.

The email, from a senior agency official, reads in part:

DO NOT COMMUNICATE OR ENGAGE WITH AGITATORS. It serves no purpose other than inflaming the situation. No one is going to convince the other. The only communication should be the officers issuing commands.

Under the new approach, Reuters reported that ICE officers will be equipped with megaphones and instructed to clearly announce each step of an arrest, an effort to impose order after the volatile scenes previously seen.

The guidance offers the clearest picture yet of how the Trump administration is recalibrating its immigration crackdown following intense political pressure in Minnesota, following the shooting death of two US citizens by federal officers.

The new order comes days after President Donald Trump handed control of Minnesota operations to border czar Tom Homan.

Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol commander who had been leading the operation, has been demoted and is expected to retire.

ICE Agents Get Stunning New Order From Top Brass About Engaging Protesters, Internal Email Shows

Is this a softening of policy ir just another game being played?

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

Last Week At The Sh*t Show–01Feb26

A brand new month and not much has changed…..the doings in DC is tragic…..

The big stories for the past week has been the violence in Minneapolis….from killings, to gas attacks on children to using a 5 year old as bait and the arrest of citizens for no other reason than they could.

News has come out that there is some shuffling going on in ICE…..

“I’m not here because the federal government has carried out this mission perfectly,” White House border czar Tom Homan said at a news conference in Minneapolis on Thursday. Homan, who arrived in the city after Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino was reassigned, said there is a plan to reduce the number of federal agents in Minnesota, but it will depend on cooperation from local authorities. Homan stressed: “We are not surrendering the president’s mission on immigration enforcement.” He said progress had been made in recent days and he would be “staying ’til the problem’s gone.”

  • Drawdown. “I have staff from CBP and from ICE working on a drawdown plan,” Homan said, per the Minnesota Star Tribune. “What does that look like, based on the cooperation? What does that look like based on the targets we have left to find?” He later added: “My main focus now is drawdown, based upon the great conversations I’ve had with your state and local leaders.”
  • “Targeted” operations. Homan said federal authorities will “conduct targeted enforcement operations targeting what we’ve done for decades,” the Guardian reports. ICE has been criticized for tactics like raiding Home Depot parking lots. “President Trump and I, along with others in administration, have recognized that certain improvements could and should be made,” he said. That’s exactly what I’m doing here.” He said “all operations will be targeted, but the prioritization are going to be criminal aliens, public safety threats, and national security threats,” but added that deportation “is never off the table” for people in the country illegally.

We will see..

Then there is the ops going on in  Maine….

ICE agents have pulled back from an aggressive operation in Maine, according to Sen. Susan Collins, who says the move came after she pressed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to stand down. The immigration enforcement push drew bipartisan criticism after more than 200 people were arrested in the state this week, reports Axios. DHS described the operation as “targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens who have terrorized communities.” But Collins, a Republican who leads the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the operation was “too sweeping and indiscriminate” and her office was inundated with calls from residents who were fearful and angry about legal immigrants being detained.

“I can report that Secretary Noem has informed me that ICE has ended its enhanced activities in the State of Maine,” tweeted Collins. DHS has yet to confirm, per Politico. The senator had publicly urged Noem to halt aggressive campaigns in Maine and Minnesota on Monday, in advance of a Friday deadline to pass a spending package that includes funding for DHS. But she has not joined fellow Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in demanding the secretary’s resignation.

I kinda doubt that this is a good thing….but we shall see.

Then the second big story was Melania’s new documentary…..

Melania Trump’s new documentary has landed a splashy premiere venue: the newly rebranded Trump-Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. The Brett Ratner-directed film, Melania, tracks the first lady over the 20 days before the 2025 presidential inauguration and was made with her cooperation, per the Hollywood Reporter. A trailer released last week shows her standing in the US Capitol rotunda on President Trump’s second inauguration day, turning to the camera and saying, “Here we go again.”

Her movie is not being received well….

Both Trump and the production studio behind Melania have spent lavishly in promoting the film’s release. The documentary reportedly cost Amazon $40 million for the rights, and another $35 million in marketing. The White House hosted a special screening of it for a group of CEOs, including Apple’s Tim Cook and AMD’s Lisa Su. And Trump has touted the movie on his social media platform, Truth Social, saying, ​​”Get your tickets today – Selling out, FAST!”

While US box office performance generally has been in decline for the past several years, Melania’s ticket sales have been of particular interest.

In the UK, The Guardian reported that as of Monday, just one ticket had been sold for the first 3:10 pm screening at the flagship London location of Vue, a large cinema chain. (That number has since jumped to 13, according to a WIRED review of available seats.) Elsewhere online, commentators have posted screenshots of empty seating charts for various theaters.

https://www.wired.com/story/we-found-2-theaters-with-sold-out-melania-opening-day-screenings/

Donny has added a new portrait to the White House…..a portrait with him and his hero….

A photograph of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin standing side by side in Alaska has been framed and put on display in the White House.

The posed portrait of the US and Russian presidents, taken at the Alaska summit in August, has been hung on a wall in the Palm Room, which links the West Wing to the presidential residence.

Below it, in a matching gold frame of the same size, is a photo of Mr Trump with his granddaughter, Carolina Dorothy Trump, six.

The photograph appears to be the same image Mr Trump showed off to reporters in the Oval Office in August, telling them it had been sent to him by Putin following their summit in Anchorage.

Mr Trump said he thought the Russian leader looked “nice” in the photo, which recorded the first face-to-face meeting between US and Russian leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

He said at the time: “OK of me, but nice of him. So that was very nice that it was sent to me.” He added that he planned to autograph the photo and send it back to Putin.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/01/28/trump-hangs-putin-photo-in-white-house/

Then there is the idiot we called VP….

The vice president appeared live on CNN from Minneapolis as he gave a speech on Thursday, January 22, addressing the ongoing tensions between residents and ICE agents. Vance, 41, made claims about how Black and brown U.S. citizens in Minneapolis being pulled over by ICE must have done something wrong.

The vice president appeared live on CNN from Minneapolis as he gave a speech on Thursday, January 22, addressing the ongoing tensions between residents and ICE agents. Vance, 41, made claims about how Black and brown U.S. citizens in Minneapolis being pulled over by ICE must have done something wrong.

Vance then replied, “Well, I think your question assumes something that’s not necessarily in evidence, which is that when there are American citizens who have been caught up in some of these enforcement operations, very often it is people who have assaulted a law enforcement officer.

“They’re not being arrested because they violated the immigration laws, they’re being arrested because they punched a federal law enforcement officer. That is a totally reasonable thing.” The claim was entirely unsubstantiated, with no evidence of it being true.

(irishstar.com)

Speaking of Donny and dictators…

“Uh, it could happen. Yeah, I would have him. It’s something that could happen, yeah. Hey, he’s the head of a country, and I mean, he’s the strong head, don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks, and his people sit up and [give] attention. I want my people to do the same,” Trump replied.

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/trump-says-wants-americans-treat-1651782

MTG has spoken up yet again…..

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) urged President Trump’s MAGA base to “take off their political blinders” as she expressed skepticism about the use of force deployed during the latest shooting in Minnesota involving a federal immigration agent.

In a post on the social platform X, Greene touted her support for law enforcement and immigration enforcement, but she also defended the right to legally carry firearms, indirectly pushing back on claims that 37-year-old Alex Pretti posed a threat to federal officers because he was armed.

“I unapologetically believe in border security and deporting criminal illegal aliens and I support law enforcement. However, I also unapologetically support the 2nd amendment,” Greene wrote. “Legally carrying a firearm is not the same as brandishing a firearm.”

“I support American’s 1st and 4th amendment rights,” she continued. “There is nothing wrong with legally peacefully protesting and videoing.”

The Trump administration has defended the shooting, saying the agent fired “defensive shots” at Pretti, who had a gun that was recovered by federal authorities. Others have accused the agent of acting with excessive force, pointing to video footage showing Pretti recording Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers with his phone before the incident escalated.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5705837-greene-maga-shooting-minnesota/

Then there is Mississippi’s own “Tater Twat” Reeves….

Gov. Tate Reeves’ Jan. 24 Fox News television interview discussing Mississippi’s winter storm was interrupted by footage of protestors against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence in Minnesota.

Reeves later took to social media to criticize the protests.

“The mobs of anarchists and radicals who are terrorizing American cities need to go home, whether that’s just back the their mother’s basements or back to Mogadishu,” he wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Gov. Tate Reeves’ Jan. 24 Fox News television interview discussing Mississippi’s winter storm was interrupted by footage of protestors against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence in Minnesota.

Reeves later took to social media to criticize the protests.

“The mobs of anarchists and radicals who are terrorizing American cities need to go home, whether that’s just back the their mother’s basements or back to Mogadishu,” he wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2026/01/27/minnesota-ice-protests-criticized-by-mississippi-governor-tate-reeves/88375642007/

Reeves is a spineless boob that will orally gratify Donny if the need arises.

Here is a little FYI for you about immigrants….

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2026/florida-texas-undocumented-immigrants-not-minnesota-vance-claim/

It is about penalizing Blue states and cities not actually chasing some illegals…..

That Was The Week That Was

I hope your Sunday is good and restful….and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

IST Saturday News Dump–31Jan26

A very cold day in South Mississippi and what better time than a news dump?

Local–For the first time in a very long time the Gulf Coast has experienced 7 days straight below freezing weather…….today at 0600 it is 19 and high is predicted to be 31….may not seem much to some but for the Deep South it is a big deal.

Personal–Monday I have a full day (yet again) of doctors….I will find out the results of my last biopsy….I am dreading that encounter.

Do you want to live to 100?

People who don’t eat meat may be less likely than meat eaters to reach the age of 100, according to a recent study. But before you reconsider your plant-based diet, there’s more to these findings than meets the eye.

The research tracked over 5,000 Chinese adults aged 80 and older who participated in the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, a nationally representative study that began in 1998. By 2018, those following diets that don’t contain meat were less likely to become centenarians compared with meat eaters.

On the surface, this appears to contradict decades of research showing that plant-based diets are good for your health. Vegetarian diets, for example, have been consistently linked to lower risks of heart disease and stroke, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. These benefits come partly from higher fiber intake and lower saturated fat consumption.

So what’s going on? Before drawing any firm conclusions, there are several important factors to consider.

https://www.sciencealert.com/study-finds-meat-eaters-are-more-likely-to-live-to-100-but-theres-a-catch

Functional Synthetic Life….

While the world was busy arguing over AI-generated art and essays, a team at the Arc Institute and Stanford University was training AI on a much more complex language: the code of life itself. In a breakthrough study published on the preprint server bioRxiv scientists revealed they have successfully used generative AI to design viable bacteriophages — viruses that hunt and kill bacteria.

Traditional genetic engineering is a painstaking grind of trial and error. We’re often limited by our own “human” understanding of how thousands of genetic parts interact. To bypass this bottleneck, researchers turned to Evo, a new class of “genome language models.”

Just as ChatGPT predicts the next word in a sentence, Evo was trained on millions of pieces of genetic information to predict the next nucleotide in a DNA sequence. Evo 1 used ~2.7M genomes, Evo 2 used a curated atlas of 128k organisms (with 9.3 trillion nucleotides). By learning the “grammar” of viral evolution, the AI can begin to innovate, proposing holistic genomic architectures that have never existed in the wild.

The researchers used a well-known virus called ΦX174 as their template. It’s a tiny, elegant predator that infects E. coli bacteria. This virus is called a bacteriophage, meaning bacteria-eater. By “prompting” Evo with a few snippets of ΦX174 DNA, they generated thousands of synthetic candidates. After a rigorous digital filtering process, they took 285 of the best designs and physically synthesized them in the lab.

https://www.zmescience.com/science/biology/ai-generative-design-new-virus-species/

What could go wrong?

Water Water Everywhere……for many years we were taught that the water here on Earth came to us via the many meteor strikes in the early…..but is that fat?

For many years, planetary scientists have believed that water-rich meteorites arriving late in Earth’s history (OK, the time might be late to the researchers, but it’s still 4 billion years ago) could have delivered most of Earth’s water. But in a paper (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2531796123) published in the Proceedings to the National Academy of Sciences, researchers led by Tony Gargano at the Lunar and Planetary Institute and The University of New Mexico analyzed a large number of Apollo lunar regolith samples using high-precision triple oxygen isotopes

They can’t do the same with Earth because tectonics and constant crustal recycling have erased the meteorite bombardment record. But the Moon is stable with no atmosphere, and therefore no weather. So, it has maintained an archive: lunar regolith, the loose layer of debris produced and reworked by impacts over billions of years.

Ever since the Apollo missions brought back lunar samples, scientists have analyzed that material by studying elements abundant in meteorites but scarce in the Moon’s crust. But lunar regolith is difficult to decipher. First, meteorite impacts can melt, vaporize, and rework material repeatedly. Second, geological processes after those impacts can separate metal from silicate, which complicates trying to figure out the type and amount of material that came from meteorites.

Did Earth’s water really come from meteorites?

This is a disturbing find about our children….

An alarming proportion of kids just starting school are baffled by how books work.

In a new survey of primary, or elementary, school staff conducted by the UK charity Kindred Squared, the teachers estimated that nearly a third of students in reception class — the equivalent of pre-school in the US — did not know how to correctly use books. At times, some children even tried to swipe or tap the pages like a smartphone, reported Sky News.

It’s sounds incredible, but it’s not the first that we’ve heard of the bizarre phenomenon. The Kindred researchers define “using” books separately from literacy, and instead focus on a child’s ability to intuit turning the pages, rather than trying to interact with them like a touchscreen. Even though 44 percent of parents believe this is something a child should be able to do, the reality according to the 1,000 surveyed teachers is that 28 percent of them can’t. Teachers in the survey, which focused on other aspects of school readiness beyond reading, also said that around a quarter of children weren’t toilet trained and couldn’t eat and drink on their own.

The findings are a grim reflection of how smartphones have taken over our lives and will add to the concerns over screen time’s impact on a child’s development. Parents are themselves addicted to their devices and pass their bad habits along, spawning whole generations of “iPad babies.”

https://futurism.com/future-society/children-schools-books-like-phones

I apologize for the brevity of this post today but I had to deal with a family crisis….hopefully all will be back to normal soon.

Enjoy your Saturday…..keep warm and smile.

As always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

On The Way To The Fed

Over a year now Donny has been doing nothing but bad mouthing the Fed and now he has his chance to modify it to his way of thinking.

President Trump has made his choice for Fed chairman. The president, who teased the announcement Thursday night, said in a Truth Social post Friday morning that he is nominating economist Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor, to replace Jerome Powell, whose term ends in May.

  • “I have known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best,” the president wrote in a lengthy post listing Warsh’s accomplishments. “On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting,’ and he will never let you down.”

Warsh was a finalist in 2017 but lost out to Jerome Powell, who was renominated by Joe Biden in 2021. Trump later turned on Powell and has repeatedly said he regretted not picking Warsh, the Wall Street Journal reports. “Kevin, I could have used you a little bit here. Why weren’t you more forceful when you wanted that job?” Trump said at an event in 2020. “I would have been very happy with you.” Warsh, 55, became the youngest governor in Fed history in 2006.

Warsh served as a Fed governor during the 2008-2009 financial crisis and has since become one of the institution’s sharper critics. He was long a “hawk” who pushed for higher interest rates to control inflation but has more recently changed his position and pushed for faster interest rate cuts, aligning with Trump’s position, the AP reports. Warsh, once a free-trade advocate, has also lined up with Trump on tariffs, a position that could ease tensions between the White House and the Fed if he’s confirmed. The BBC reports that Warsh has a family connection to Trump: His father-in-law is billionaire businessman Ronald Lauder, a longtime Trump donor.

Confirmation is not guaranteed, the Journal notes. The Senate must sign off, and Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican on the Banking Committee, has vowed to block Trump’s Fed nominees while the Justice Department investigates Powell’s testimony about Fed building renovations—an inquiry Powell has described as a pretext to force lower rates. Warsh emerged as Trump’s favored candidate over National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett and two other finalists, BlackRock executive Rick Rieder and current Fed governor Christopher Waller.

Do not get excited yet….he is nominated but not confirmed by Congress.

If confirmed will he be just another Trump puppet?

But he has an ever changing opinion and that tells me he will most likely do whatever Donny boy wants…I do not see him stand up against a Trump onslaught….

Do You?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

SCOTUS Will End Democracy

If you have been paying attention you will see just how SCOTUS under the leadership of a political hack, Roberts, has been stripping away the powers of Congress and subverting the course of democracy.

Over the past several decades, the Supreme Court has slowly whittled down the power of Congress and, in large part thanks to President Donald Trump’s chaotic second term in office, has already managed to dethrone Congress’ role as the most powerful branch of government, argued legal scholar Duncan Hosie Tuesday.

“For now, the supernova of Donald Trump’s presidency has muted this systemic conflict in public view,” Hosie wrote in an analysis published Tuesday in The Atlantic.

“His second term – defined by galloping abuses of executive power buttressed by Trump v. United States – has played out against a Republican Congress and Republican Court aligned, if not enthralled, with him. But this alignment is likely temporary and contingent. Should a Democratic Congress return, the conflict will roar back into view.”

That conflict, Hosie argued, is the Supreme Court’s decades-long “power grab” to strip Congress of its ability to check the power of the executive branch, define rights for Americans, and even make laws — a “power grab” that has only accelerated during Trump’s second term. And, in large part to Trump’s unprecedented tenure in the White House, the “power grab” is going largely unnoticed, Hosie wrote.

“The short-term convergence of the branches should not obscure the larger transformation: Congress is no longer the first branch of government,” Hosie wrote. “The same gale-force winds of polarization that split Congress into warring camps has also produced a Republican-appointee-dominated Court systematically constraining congressional power while expanding its own.”

The threat of the Supreme Court’s ongoing “power grab” was so dire, Hosie warned, that it could very well bring about an end to the United States’ “constitutional democracy.”

https://www.rawstory.com/supreme-court-2674879295/

This exactly the outcome that the outcome that I have been warning about over the past decade (probably longer)….this is just what will happen when political hacks are nominated then confirmed….they are destroying democracy and helping those that are doing the deeds in every way they can.

If these people cannot do their part at preserving this democracy then it is time to get rid of them and start over….when I say ‘get rid’ I mean remove them from office in any fashion that is necessary.

If they continue down the path they have chosen it will not be long to there is nothing left of the nation we built over the past 250 years.

Time for a change!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Sacrificial Lambs

With all the chaos created in Minneapolis has stared getting out of hand our Little Donny steps in to crush his own people….

Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem met with President Trump in the Oval Office for two hours Monday evening, reports the New York Times. It’s seen as the latest sign of Trump’s quick pivot on Minneapolis after a bipartisan backlash over the shooting of protester Alex Pretti. Noem’s job appears safe, according to the Times, but she has been essentially replaced in Minneapolis by border czar Tom Homan. Also out of Minneapolis is Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino. Both he and Noem, along with Stephen Miller, had quickly painted Pretti as a domestic terrorist out to kill federal agents, but the backlash ensued when video and eyewitnesses contradicted that narrative.

Trump fielded calls on Sunday from Republicans including Sen. Lindsey Graham warning him that the White House’s immigration agenda was at risk because of the grim TV images, and that Trump needed to make moves quickly, reports the Wall Street Journal. Getting rid of Bovino was an easy first step, per Axios. “He’s a cowboy, and it was a mess,” a source familiar with the president’s thinking tells the outlet. “It was only escalation, and no one was going to back down. Homan going in is a good thing. Someone needed to step in.”

Trump also adopted a much friendlier tone toward Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after the two spoke by phone on Monday. The Journal reports on part of a deal they struck: Trump would pull some federal agents out of the city if Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey provided more cooperation to the remaining agents who are trying to arrest people in the US illegally. The first agents are expected to leave on Tuesday. House Democrats, meanwhile, plan to open an investigation into Noem next week as part of a push to impeach her, reports the Washington Post.

What is this sick game Donny is playing?

He creates chaos and then when it goes too far he tries to look concerned and sacrifices some people around him…..

Or does create chaos first in LA then Chicago and other points until the disaster of Minneapolis and then he calls off his goons and moves them to the next victim city….is this a tactic to make a case for the Insurrection Act?

How much more pathetic can Donny get…..don’t answer that we know he is not finished.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Whose Oil Is It Anyway?

Do you think that once Saddam was executed and the oil starting flowing again that the resource was turned over to the Iraqi people…..if so think again….

Now that the Iraqi government elections did not turn out the way the US wanted their only source of income is being threatened….

Iraq had a parliamentary election in late 2025, with the results ratified in mid-December. This, as usual, led to a scramble to try to form a majority coalition out of a large number of political parties that gained meaningful seats in a situation where the plurality was only 11.74%, far short of the ability to form a government without a slew of partners.

This is always a challenge, and involves a lot of internal compromise over cabinets and coalition structure. The US, however, is making this dramatically more challenging by threatening to withhold materially all of Iraq’s oil revenue from the Iraqi government if the coalition isn’t to their satisfaction.

The US is able to do this, because in post-occupation Iraq, their oil revenue is held in US dollars at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, right where the US can easily get at it or restrict its transfer to the Iraqis whenever the mood suits them.

Shi’ites have a majority of the seats in Iraq’s parliament in practice. That’s no surprise as they are the majority of the population. Carving out a coalition of Shi’ites is easier said than done, however, because many of the parties are at odds with one another. Adding to that, the US has decided that Shi’ite parties that are still aligned with armed factions are “Iran-backed” and therefore “incompatible with building a strong partnership between the United States and Iraq.”

In practice this means that the threat is if the government includes any of the Shi’ite blocs which the US considers “Iran-backed” then Iraq will immediately lose all of its oil revenue for displeasing the US.

It’s a bigger problem then it seems on the surface, because the major Shi’ite blocs almost all have some ties with militias in some form or another. The expectation had been that the State of Law Party might parlay their 6% vote and fourth place finish into a return to power for former premier Nouri al-Maliki. Controversial given Maliki’s past, it is also seemingly impossible to argue that State of Law isn’t aligned with armed factions.

A lot of big parties have some ideological and practical ties to the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), which are Iran-backed and while nominally integrated into Iraq’s own military, it’s almost impossible for any meaningful Shi’ite faction to not have any ties to them.

The PMU were historically scores of smaller militias, generally Shi’ite, generally Iran-aligned, and they merged over a decade ago to counter the rise of ISIS, which seemed convenient at the time, but which the US now seems to see as politically unpalatable.

This is not the first time the US has threatened to use their de facto control over Iraq’s oil revenue to coerce them. In 2020 after the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, Iraq threatened to expel US forces from Iraq in protest, and President Trump at the time threatened to seize their oil revenue in retaliation if they did so.

US Threatens To Cut Iraq Off From Oil Revenue Over Government Composition

I post this to posit a question….is this type of blackmail what the Venezuelan people have to look forward to in the future…..if their elections do not turn out the way we want we steal their oil from them?

At least Iraqi oil revenue is held in the Federal Reserve and not like Venezuelan oil which is in an offshore account where Donny can get his grubby hands on easily.

And now Iran is being threatened….and they have a huge reserve of oil….will they be the next in a long line for thievery?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Are Tariffs Still A Good Idea?

One more time for the mentally slow.

Well no but then I have never thought that they were a good idea….but there are some out there that will defend the tariffs as a good idea for raining cash for the US….but those are the least intelligent amongst us.

According to a new study, of the $200 million the United States made from President Donald Trump’s tariffs in 2025, 96% was paid by American buyers. The study drew from data covering over 25 million transactions valued at nearly $4 trillion.

A major selling point of President Trump’s series of tariffs on other countries was that they would pay the United States for their imports and, in turn, boost the American economy. However, the study, published by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany, found the opposite occurred.

“The 2025 US tariffs are an own goal: American importers and consumers bear nearly the entire cost. Foreign exporters absorb only about 4% of the tariff burden—the remaining 96% is passed through to US buyers,” the report stated.

The study claims that while U.S. customs revenue surged by approximately $200 billion in 2025, trade volumes collapsed, and export prices did not fall. The study cited the tariff hikes the U.S. imposed on India in August 2025.

“We compared Indian exports to the US with shipments to Europe and Canada and identified a clear pattern,” Julian Hinz, Research Director at the Kiel Institute and one of the authors of the study, explained. “Both export value and volume to the US dropped sharply, by up to 24 percent. But unit prices—the prices Indian exporters charged—remained unchanged. They shipped less, not cheaper.”

Basically, the study found that instead of other countries paying the tariffs to the United States and growing the U.S. economy, American consumers faced higher prices as companies passed the tariffs on to them. The tariffs also reduced trade volumes, meaning Americans not only paid more, but they also had fewer options.

Study: 96% of the $200 Billion the US Made From Trump’s Tariffs in 2025 Was Paid by American Buyers

This study’s findings are exactly what I wrote about when all these useless tariffs were proposed by Donny and his band of idiots.

You are paying that cost of the tariffs….do I need to keep pointing it out or will you still embrace this idiot as some sort of magic genius that will solve all out problems?

If so then you really need to pay attention or at least learn some basic economics….it really is not that hard.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”