We avoided a war for Greenland.  I guess.  The most nonsensical imperial mission imaginable, it ignores that we have been effectively a soft imperial power there in that our government has everything they possibly want in military base and any mineral extraction contracts and if by some crazy reason they’d want more — which there is no reason they would and it would be an unprofitable burden and venture — it could be had for the asking — except for some stupid reason Trump got it in his head that it would be neat to have Greenland.  And off of that we have mainstream and conservative coverage on the Greenland issue as though there is something sane at stake here, rational US actors, great geopolitical concerns in power politics (Russia may want to do something with Greenland, even as… they are the first signees for Trump’s “NATO circumventing and bulldoze Gaza to open up hotels” Board of Peace, so I don’t know what they are.).  We can mark this week as that where the price of electing Trump twice hit on the world stage, as opposed to what we have domestically.  I would like to think a weakened power position has its opportunities for finally limiting American reach — except there this aggression just turns inward — and so it is, ICE thuggery galore, federal government brazen in keeping up the lies.

I suppose we ought all read Hillbilly Elegy to get some sense of the next president — Trump is where everyone thinks Biden was, except malignant so. I always imagine opening up the alternate universes, to see which one at the outset of 2024 keeps us from President Trump, which action from Biden, which nominating decision from the Democrats. I hoped Biden could take his final vow shortly after his State of the Union address — I had him following a new variant Chester Arthur model in keeping up the campaign as it is the only way to govern but pulling the ripcord. From there, I have no idea if Kamala Harris with an extra few months’ could do anything or if we have to skip to Andy Beshear or forced to skip to a Dwayne Johnson. The last redoubt for an alternate universe, and one that is highly doubtful but strokes the line by Allan Lichtman and those “keys” — Biden runs… The logic swirls, America gets confronted by the specter, Biden’s doddering old age serves in the roundabout way to bring us over to Trump’s doddering old age — and now you have clarification — two versions of doddering to choose from, and look into instead of passing it off as a Don Rickels routine that entertains on election day.

The state of Fox News, and sure you skip and hop off there off to Newsmax and OANN for a further nausea, but keeping to Fox News as the central Republican clearinghouse. And in the days of Trump, this gets especially loopy. I could always paint the picture of the hidey-holes and rationalizations and re-directions for ICE’s presence in Minneapolis — Sean Hannity’s cameraman reporter chases a protester (thankfully a well-spoken one) and finds his bottom line question — “you don’t think we should not apprehend illegal immigrants?” — a matter I am more agnostic on than most of the protesters but which is a question thoroughly irrelevant to this situation at hand. Or… same saying as the argument on illegal immigration… “a right way, and a wrong way”.

But if I basically know what all that works out to — and somewhere looming is a celebration of Bill Maher and any other celebrity that makes enough a “both sider” balance of politics as you see MSNow spotlight Joe Rogan.

Curious as you move off of this story and onto some things that are not even in the realm of moving further on issues and positions moved into the mainstream for decades. What is really freaky, and bizarre, and loopy, is seeing the Republican mouthpiece of Fox News keeping a straight face and not missing a beat in describing Trump administration and calls on getting Greenland. As though nothing is abnormal or utterly bizarre about this. And it is a straight-way story, nothing odd about it.

I feel like I need to check back in with Matt Taibbi– that Glen Glenwald type who soft-pedals the crimes of President Trump because he has a hankering to get after the Deep State. There are two things I am curious to hear. One is to see how much his co-host, Walter Kirn, is gloating on the downfall of Tim Walz, who overall was the most pointless Democratic vice presidential nominee since John Edwards. (Can he sway a half dozen old white dudes in exurban Michigan? Nope!) Kirk had a particular hashing on Walz, which is fair and reasonable enough, but he tended to give his particular game away in comparing his political type in history and throwing out the name Gus Hall. The thing on Walz is I barely can concern myself to notice it look into the matter — his is a political governing style that may be prone to lose sight of details, and the mess of covid is something you would want to give leeway for inevitable mis-choices. Of course, the major lure on the right-wing podcasting YouTube guest to the white house to discuss righteousness of ICE guy who did the expose is “Somalis!”, and this — whatever our story is in looking in– gives him a thing to point at to show credibility of his next thing is incredulous — see, “stop the steal”.

The bigger question on Matt Taibbi comes to our new actions on Venezuela. Taibbi comes out of his constant ragging on the Bush Administration in the “War on Terror” and Iraq and keeping it in through the Obama Administration, always a bit flowing with his drone strikes. So Trump’s isolationist posturing gets him to some spot of basic support — as he allows for the fight for the civil liberties of Tulsi Gabbard and fights Ukraine’s propaganda machine. Welcome now to the nakedly imperialist war with Venezuela, the capture of Maduro and the blunt discussion of capturing oil. I know there will be a rationalizing of this for something which, given his historical positioning, should be nothing short of outrage. I imagine just packs of what-aboutisms and a look see over at a new love of concepts of the Monroe Doctrine. Maybe it is just double down on reminding everyone that the Cheneys backed Harris afterall.

I end up seeing few tv commercials this day and age, but when I catch a thing I have to somewhat examine it.  This is on a football game.  Now, in football we have moved from a dominating number of ads for male impotence drugs to gambling — the legal barriers for gambling ads have fallen and this is what we have tied to sportsball showings.  

The ad I catch and watch i, predictably, am not entirely what is for.  Like, chip dip I am assuming.  It is three people in a couch.  A white woman, two guys — one seems to be gay, the other I hate to point as black but in casting a scene I know they made a mental decision for diversity.  The voice -over, “when you are watching the game with your boyfriend who knows nothing about football.”. The fey gay guy makes a couple comments — “what a fantastic looking fumble!” and I don’t know – – I guess the white woman and black man reach for the chip dip to absolve the embarrassment of whatever.

In some prior year, we may have some kind of joke applied toward sports-ignorant woman, trying too hard to be into it for the guy, and maybe we still may pluck that in if we can get It to be somewhat effacing to the man.  Today I guess we can really do that gag if it is applied to an effeminate man?  But on this commercial I am stuck on a question — are they hedging, leave up a plausible deniability for assumption on parts of the audience for who the boyfriend is the boyfriend of, even though — hm.

The great anticipation of a dump of Epstein files goes where one would think it would. Pages of black bars, the words “Bill Clinton” conspicuously not blacked out, an allowance for some clearly plausibly fake Epstein letter — the better to have Fox News And Newsmax chime in about duped responders. And not able to shut it all off, a quick comment from the Justice Department with the line that if it were true the dastardly Garland would have thrown it all out to get Trump.

Other disclosures passed from the Epstein Estate to the Democrats in the Hill give an absurd tableau of things. You have to drop in a timeline of Epstein, and then weigh if the timeline matters for shadings. Epstein is a guy with fundraising contacts so politicos glad handle him, how in are they on anything short of the island is up for conjecture. Jacuzzi sightings abound. And we have that sense that he liked jamming strange travellers together. So we have it — Noam Chomsky meeting Steve Bannon. Good chuckle, huh?

It is this milieu of elites that bubbles up into Bohemian Grove and Reptilian alien conspiracies. And they all landed on Trump — blinders on to get work arounds on where dots and patterns pull in.

Time Magazine’s selection of “The Architects of AI” for “Person of the Year” does at long last settle away a big complaint for this citation. The one seen back in 2001 when they skipped past the obvious figure of Osama Bin Laden. They can’t bring themselves to do what they could in the 1930s with Adolf Hitler and pick out “destroyers of civilization” for the honor. Now they can, I guess. To be sure, so far the most immediate personal effect is seeing a deluge on nonsense on my YouTube feed — weird computerized copy versions of some personalities have dropped on in.

I do have a defence on something with Joe Rogan, only in that in some corner of other I see a dealing of mocking a bit from him in discussion with tech mogul yoohoos. It is a tangent on AI Jesus, Second Coming, some way or other granting some biblical concepts of an “imagine if” and how. This is functionally stoner talk, whether Rogan is high right Then or not irrelevant, and I would encourage anyone to it. It neither negates not facilitates, say, his inability to see the implications of Trump’s immigration promises and backing for it and think through its problems until after he helps him win election and becomes President again, and then and only then can skid to a “whooah!”

The number of strange sensations I get in the current administration. You watch the over the top glad handling of a Trump administration meeting, where everyone goes out of their way and makes over the top statements on Trump’s greatness and what he has bestowed on the American nation. The obvious parallel is to the dictators of North Korea — or any dictator, but Saddam is long gone and you can jump to the one most comically exaggerated. And there is that power dynamic certainly in making sure he knows you are on his good side always with no deviation.

But there is a different point this reminds me of. Joseph Biden. At the end of his administration, post debate, and in particular post campaign quitting. And trying to parse the dynamic and if there is something in the Trump dynamic that is the same. The manner in which Kamala Harris seemed required to pay deference, and the manner this came off as pumping up a doddering old man — “nice” in its dictionary pejorative definition. And Biden is and was reportedly brittle — especially with Obama — did not get a phone call of thanks in a long series of phone calls thanking different people for their support through his career — and this strikes me as more human and relatable than the constant harping for Trump and his reselling of the package of Trump Greatness — it suggests Biden has an understanding of the political dynamics of two faces around him. But the North Korea model of glad handling to parody levels may have that element — and sure, it is the manner of getting what you want now (Marco Rubio and a war with Venezuela), but it is also the manner of pushing past the doddering old man.

Mrs. Smith goes to Washington, though it is a wackadoodle Mrs. Smith. An every person — a nice MAGA hat wearing neighbor. Good person to have a beer with, if you are into that position of conversation, and can shake off full implications. I may even defend the supposed “Jewish Space Lasers”. This was never Jewish weather control devices; it was the Rothschild weather devices. And, you know, look up the one about Francis Bacon being the real writer of Shakespeare plays, a conspiracy theory that was effectively endorsed by the Rocky And Bullwinkle, and something that there are no Jewish people present in– yet, look it up on the Internet and the next link for the thing will be… oh, they call it a pipeline, don’t they?

And nowhere in her late foray into media did anyone ask her, “So, what happened with January 6?”, which is sort of the entry point I have on whether there is any, even a scintilia, of rehabilitation, or if she just got blasted into reality — she signed up for Trump on behalf of fighting “migrant crime” and an incoherent economic populism with the social populism, and at least an adjacent qanon, and found Trump stands for nine of it or little of it — they got their ice agents and prisons and that is about it.

And her reasoning makes sense. There is no “Happy Warrior” cause in a House minority under a Trump Republican Party. This is where the likes of Congresswoman Crockett fall down in belittling her withdrawal — “after a few weeks of ridicule from a handful of differences”. Because, Crockett has a set of principals and causes she would continue working on and against and messaging in a party minority position, with no party stuck beholden to some personality.

A problem comes in, though. In describing her reason for leaving, Marjorie Taylor Greene cites that swamp, bipartisan, corrupt. Sure. Funny thing, a common Republican comment on Nancy Pelosi is buying the amount of money she has now versus when she entered Congress. They begin to do try this with Alexandria Ocasio Vortex — with her it is to belittle her bar-tending job. Do you like AOC’s proposed legislation on stock trading for contractor companies Congress votes on? Marjorie Taylor Greene moves up her bank account off of Palantir stock. Because she, after all, part of the bipartisan swamp.

Whacking and managing to reassemble the algorithm of the personalized YouTube page view, I do have the convenience of getting the side by side on what dominates Fox News versus an assortment of Democratic or liberal (or anti-Trump Republican) feeds. Fox News carries on with the Civil War in the Democratic Party — curious mixings of who to side next to Schumer. They do sneak through the big story — Epstein — in a “mighty suspicious timing”, the edict from on high of messaging from the Republican Party and Trump. Actually if we wanted to expedite the timing to sometime earlier, Johnson could have sworn in Adelita Grijalva earlier — the timing was to the discharge petition as much as anything.

The liberal sphere gives a bit of a range — eventually someone does land on my gambit that, in this great “Traitorous 8 Democrats!” (and Schumer) is… the three Senators you should hate for their messaging at the end of this are Shaheen, Fetterman, and Angus King … on this point, I do finally see someone drop in the spectre of Angus King himself. Fetterman has already transitioned from being a Fox News bogeyman and figure of mockery to Fox News’s favorite Democrat with corollary opposite for Internet-plugged Democrats.

We do get a question — “Where’s JD Vance?”. In the lightest of tin-foil hat speculations, more to the point the Kremlinology of things, it is easy to speculate – – preparations are being made for the Trump downfall, and as Ford and Nixon comparisons go this is a “Welcome to Hell”. (The “Long National Nightmare” mutates.). But as though noting his sudden disappearance out of podcast and socal media land, and speculation of assembling a post-Trump reappearance for Vance version 3 or 4, a Fox News appearance pops in, the images with him standing lovingly behind Trump.

Curious on where Gutfeld and/or “The Five” have for “AOC just made this up!” A stray comment along the lines that “I have Trump supporters asking about joining a Democratic Socialist Party!” The answer on that is lightly complicated. Or, i are now in the interest of examining the seven or so percent of Mamdani voters who voted for Trump. The question being, are they gettable by the coming Marjorie Taylor Greene presidential campaign in her flanking to the left of the mildewed austerity-minded Republican Party on “entitlements”, similar to Trump in 2016 (with an inevitable throw away all pretensions of the second term). Or will they gravitate to the next Ron Paul as they pound a crypto currency / gold revolution and a pure Ayn Rand line but get them by promising not to bomb Venezuelan boats? It is a question that hangs in the air.

I kind of half defend, half don’t a “cave” by the group of Democratic Senators who have called off the shutdown, or appreciate some logic here. You are disappointed because this was the first fight, gumption, the legislative party members have shown. And really, it seems they are just waiting for the election to pass to pull the rug from it and move on. The right least vulnerable Democrats — set to retire or not up in 2026 — getting a couple piddlywinks

This was not going to end well. Yes, it is setting up Health Care against SNAP benefits, leveraging one against the other and causing flight delays in the meantime. But the game was set in the 2024 election. The American people spoke. One party stood for they/them. The other party stood against they/them. There is only so much you can do on this one. An issue has been raised — welfare is strangely popular all of a sudden, though you grasp some question if we are still not floating past the right questions.

And recall America’s short attention span here. 2013-2014. Suddenly as a result of poll crashes for Republicans off of the great government shutdown. Boehner falls on the sword, ends it. Republicans in disarray. Angry “tea party”ers demanding heads. Wait to November and see where that got us. I spy that in going down a list of outraged Democrats with blaring type and graphics of eight Democratic “traitors”, a smattering of Fox News graphics — a few puzzling in its stock image of Schumer and Bernie on the question of who else to insert and they land on in some instance… Gavin Newsom, a guy who is not at all involved in this anywhere much. And maybe indeed Schumer is falling on his sword, but he is old anyways and knows his time is about up.

Lawrence O’Donnell on his msnbc show makes the case for the “traitors” — the two Nevada Senators and the Virginia Senator are looking at the barrel of not abstract but actual human suffering and economic peril. And what they got here — expanded Snap benefits, a vote that puts Republican Senators if not House members on record. Cynically they passed by the Elections, though here the President accommodated everyone by bulldozing the East Wing and holding shindigs around great literary commentary on rich oppulence. The commentators of The Bulwark join the small chorus of “Democrats did as much as they could with the hand voters gave them a year ago”, with one eye toward lobbing a raspberry at the media appearances of Maine Senator Angus King who… has one thing to say regarding him… Not a member of the Democratic Party… so, I guess dude has an out. The one thought on a calibrated politically posturing positioning “Centrist” of his ilk is we really do need the more New York City mayor elects in and about to make the vacuous-ness make a lick of sense.