People like to say you can see more than one thing on these things. Well, let's say you can. Those last few shots are an execution.
These guys should be tried for murder.
ICE/Border Patrol in the interior should be disarmed.
Frankly, these morons are lucky this wasn't a local matter. Things are turning against ICE and Trump, even here. The ICE/Border Patrol killings became a topic that surprised Harriet Hageman, running for Senate, and current Wyoming Congressman, at a really hostile town hall meeting in Casper.
Hostile.
She was confronted on this and her reaction was to flee the stage.
She next appeared in Thermopolis where things didn't go much better. The crowd started yelling at each other.
Meanwhile, in Riverton, locals blocked ICE agents into their hotel. The police had to come and rescue them.
In some parts of the country, there's an effort at a general strike today.
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Matthew, Chapter 24.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
James Madison
January 2, 2026.
The United States v. Iran
We start off this year with the no more forever wars president threatening to intervene in Iran.
Iran is a bad actor, without a doubt, but what we'd particularly note here is that Trump's policy of intervention is beginning to look a lot like the Neo Con policy. A person can like that, or not, but it's not what he was promising at all. I'd heard various Trump supporters cite the "no more forever wars" line as (one of) their reasons for supporting him.
January 3, 2026
United States v. Venezuela
The United States hit Venezuela with a “large-scale strike” early Saturday and took Maduro and his wife prisoner.
No Declaration of War exists, of course, and there's no Congressional authorization for the use of force. This is, therefore, an illegal operation.
The news is too early to really make any definitive predictions about how this will turn out. Wars, however, tend to end when the attacked party decides they are over. Maybe this will tip the scales in Venezuela and things will change. Or maybe his followers dig in and carry on, in which case we are now committed to a wider conventional war, and perhaps a following guerilla war.
As usual, when he reads a prepared statement, he sounds awful. While called to address the illegal attack in Venezuela, it meandered into the usual Trump mental mush addressing various Trump favorite topics and fantasies. Use of the National Guard in various states ended up being addressed by the clearly senile illegal occupant of the Oval Office.1
Trump has made it clear the U.S. intends to occupy Venezuela, apparently forgetting that simply seizing the head of state doesn't amount to a full surrender of anyone opposing a U.S. presence. This will require thousands of U.S. troops on a continent in which we've never had boots on the ground. People aligned with Maduro have no reason to cooperate with the US at all, and have plenty of reason not to.
Inside Venezuela there were protests over the U.S. action. Outside of the country Venezuelan expats celebrated the news.
Trump also made it clear that he intends to reverse the fifty year old nationalization of Venezuelan oil. Either Trump, or more likely somebody in his regime, has a real pre World War One view of the world, as this example of imperialism and gunboat diplomacy makes clear. Trump actually cited the Monroe Doctrine and his new security priorities.
Trump justified the action on the basis of ending Venezuelan drug exports to the U.S.
By way of a set of predictions, and knowing more about the use of military force that Donald Trump does, if the U.S. isn't in complete control of the country within thirty days, this will evolve into a guerilla war requiring no less than 100,000 U.S. troops. If the U.S. hasn't turned the country over to Venezuelans within one year, it'll evolve into a low grade guerilla war requiring no less than 50,000 boots on the ground.
January 4, 2026
United States v. Venezuela
So where are we now?
Yesterday it looked like, for awhile, that effectively what the US had done was to have mounted a coup of the Venezuelan government with the silent complicency of Venezuelan VP Delcy Rodríguez, sidestepping Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado Parisca.
Then came Trump's babbling senile statement about the operation.
Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as the country's President. She's just as left wing and Maduro, and she immediately indicated that she regard Maduro as the President and that she's not cooperating with the US.
So, what was achieved? We don't know, but unless we're going to do a full scale invasion of Venezuela, all we may have done is replace one left wing leader with another.
A bit closer to home, sort of:
Well, of course they did. Was there any doubt?
January 5, 2026
Yemeni Civil War
Saudi backed forces retook Mukalla.
Nigeria
Gunmen killed 30 in Kasuwan-Daji.
Syria
Britain and France carried out a joint airstrike late Saturday on an underground facility where members of the ISIL were located.
United States v. Venezuela
Pope Leo XIV commented on Venezuelan independence yesterday, stating:
The good of the beloved Venezuelan people must prevail over every other consideration and lead us to overcome violence and to undertake paths of justice and peace, safeguarding the country’s sovereignty, ensuring the rule of law enshrined in the Constitution, respecting the human and civil rights of each person and of all, and working to build together a serene future of collaboration, stability, and concord, with special attention to the poorest who suffer because of the difficult economic situation.
Columbian guerilla groups Unión Camilista Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) and FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) issued a warning to the US about the US having a presence in Venezuela.
FARC is a Communist guerilla movement while the ELN is a "Catholic Communist" or Liberation Theology guerilla movement. Columbia is their main focus, but they operate in Venezuela.
While the raid has been portrayed as lacking casualties on the U.S. side, U.S. troops were in fact wounded and have been air evacuated to the U.S.
Hageman's failure to say anything is really interesting. MAGA boosted the platform of "no more forever wars" but the US has been fighting everywhere, and is threatening to attack a NATO ally, Denmark, over Greenland, an act that would be deeply immoral and flat out insane. Indeed, the fact that the country is being lead by a mad man is increasingly clear, with most Republicans doing nothing about it.
Wyoming has had a strong commitment to the military. Indeed, an overly strong one as not only do an unusually large number of Wyomingites volunteer for military service, which is admirable, the state had nearly supported a military against the government attitude in recent years. Now, with it appearing that the US might send Wyoming's sons and daughters to die in Venezuelan jungles while doing something that will gut the state's oil industry, some may be having second thoughts. Hageman may be hedging her bets for her Senate run, or she may actually be among those who are horrified by the insane neo colonialism of the Trump interregnum.
January 6, 2026
Venezuela and Greenland.
There's a lot of weird war related news circulating today.
Trump claims that the government of Venezuela is going to, well, here:
The U.S. doesn't need millions of gallons of oil to be sold to the US, and further the means by which Trump claims this will happen, he'll control the sales, is legally dubious.
Frankly, I don't believe that this will occur. Much of what Trump has been saying about Venezuela is a lie and I suspect this is too.
If it isn't a lie, Wyomingites are going to get another dope slap from the demented fool they voted for. It'll take the price of oil in the state for years. It's at $46.37, below profitability, right now.
Of course, the goal would be to depress the price of oil, which consumers in most locations want depressed, even though we ought to be weaning ourselves off of oil. But closer to home, this is another example of why Wyomingites are absolute idiots to vote for the GOP.
The Nobel Peace Prize winning Venezuelan woman who probably ought to be running the country is headed home. Hopefully she takes over the government, although there's every sign that the Venezuelan socialist party will continue to do so and not much will really change.
Trump, who is demented, is now threatening Greenland.
If we lived in a sane time they'd be taking him out of the Oval Office in a straight jacket, but the Republican Party is now largely bat shit crazy so there's a real chance we'll do this, even while, for the first time, some Republican leaders are dismissing it.
Trump needs to be removed via the 25th Amendment, and like yesterday.
January 8, 2026
United States v. Venezuela
It looks like Il Duce Don's intervention in Venezuela is receiving the same treatment the outbreak of the Second World War did in Nazi Germany
Readers of the epic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich will recall that while many Germans were enthusiastic about Hitler coming to power, the public was not thrilled at all with the outbreak of World War Two. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The difference, maybe, is that democracy had already fled in Germany by 1939, whereas its trying to hold on in the United States.
This is being hailed in some quarters as a rational plan, fitting into sort of a trend line to express relief when Marco Rubio says something as opposed to Donald Trump.
Well, at least it's a plan.
The problem with it is that it really requires Venezuela's cooperation and there's no reason to believe that will be forthcoming. In this sense, it's likely to be like the 1954 Geneva plan for Vietnam, which everyone agreed was a nifty plan, and never stood a chance.
The main goal of the Socialist in Venezuela right now is no doubt to stay in power, which the Trump administration seems content to let them do. That may be because Rubio knows that removing them would involve a large-scale war.
So, we're going to sell some oil. We'll probably invest in their petroleum infrastructure. The whole thing will depress the price of oil, to the detriment of US producers, and most of the people we were complaining about in Venezuela keep their jobs.
cont:
The Senate voted to have a vote on a War Powers Resolution that would prohibit further military action in Venezuela.
Contrary to some reporting, this does not have an immediate effect of prohibiting further action in Venezuela, but there may very well be the votes to do that, in which case there are definitely enough to prohibit actions against Denmark in an insane effort to seize Greenland.
Trump is, of course, upset. This may very well take the wheels off of the Venezuelan go cart.
Also, in related news, the administration is proposing a $1.5T budget, that's trillion, for defense next year, which is also insane. The country doesn't have that kind of money. Frankly a person has to wonder if that is just some sort of bribe to the military, which may not be all that happy about some current events.
Some in the traditional conservative camp, on the other hand, are very enthusiastic over Marco Rubio and Venezuela, although no element of realism seems to have sunk into the facts that in reality, the country is run by the same political groups that were running it last week and there's very little that can be done about that other than a war of economic attrition.
January 9, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
The US has issued a warning to U.S. citizens in Ukraine to expect a significant Russian areas attack within the next few days.
United States v. Mexico
Trump threatened in a recent interview to hit drug cartel sites in Mexico, something the Mexican government will not welcome, and will likely resist.
This was something he asked about doing in his legitimate term, and was held back by the sane people in his first administration.
Iran
Iran is experiencing such widespread civil strife it appears to becoming unglued.
Misc:
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,and Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller have all moved on to military bases out of security concerns.
Iran
Iran appears to be headed towards outright revolution.
January 11, 2026
United States v. ISIL
The US hit targets in Syria again yesterday.
January 16, 2026
United States v. Denmark
European countries, members of NATO, have sent troops to Greenland because of the insane threats by the demented clown in the White House.
January 18, 2026.
United States v. ISIL
More airstrikes in Syria.
January 21, 2026
Israel v. Gaza
Donald Trump rolled out his Bored of Peas at Davos that's supposed to keep the peace in Gaza. It's impossible to take seriously given its makeup.
And we'll conclude this edition with that pathetic action by the would be demented caudillo.
January 29, 2026
United States v. Iran
Trump is weighing a major new strike on Iran after preliminary discussions between Washington and Tehran over limiting the country’s nuclear program and ballistic missile production failed to make progress.
Wait, you're thinking, we were going to war against Iran over the government killing protestors? That's the Iranian government killing Iranian protestors, not the U.S. government killing American protestors. . . that's different.
Nope, it's missiles and the nuclear program.
Wait, you're thinking, we wiped out their nuclear program.
Um. . . .
United States v. Venezuela
PAUL: So I would ask you, if a foreign country bombed our air defense missiles, captured and removed our president, and blockaded our country, would that be considered an act of war?
RUBIO; We just don't believe that this operation comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of war.
PAUL: Well, would it be an act of war if someone did it to us? Nobody dies, a few casualties, they're in and out, boom, it's a perfect military operation. Would that be an act of war? Of course it would be an act of war.
And with that quite correct observation, we'll close out this edition.
Footnotes:
1. A real irony is present here in that Maduro was not the legitimate head of state, at this point, of Venezuela, and Donald Trump is not the legitimate head of state of the United States.
What's more, Trump is insane and everyone knows it. World leaders know it. His opponents know it. And, moreover, his supporters, know it.
He's driving us over a cliff, and everyone knows that.
He's the last pathetic gasp of the Baby Boomers, as we endure a nation by the Baby Boomers, Of the Baby Boomers, and for the Baby Boomers, enduring the legacy of a government attacked by Ronald Reagan and brought into fruition by Dixiecrats.
I've predicted that the 25th Amendment would be applied to him, and moreover, his mere presence in the White House was really a smokescreen for National Conservatives. If I was right, the moment now appears too late.
The United States has come to an end as a great nation.
It might be able to rebuild, but it won't be what it was. Nore should it be. A nation stupid enough to elect Donald Trump is no longer great.
The question is, how much damage do we allow him to do?
And I say "we" advisedly. Stuffed suits like Dr. John Barrasso and castrati Mike Johnson aren't going to do anything. His cabinet has people like scared Scott Bessent in it, who sound like they're terrified to be in public, or people who cheerfully shovel his oratorical vomit. Congress could act, but the make up the GOP in Congress is 100% eunuchs who roll over to have their bellies petted by Trump or go into the corner scared and pee.
The nation's leaders have completely failed it.
The question is not, at this point, how can this be salvaged. It cannot. The question is how much can be saved so that there's something to rebuild from when we reemerge in 2028 as a minor power, second rate nation, despised by the world.
The only thing, and it is the only thing, than can really save the nation now is mass protests. An epic strike that shut the nation down completely would be something the Republicans could not ignore.
We don't even seem to have the guts for that, however. We haven't seen anything like that since the 1960s and early 1970s.
We aren't much of a people anymore.
Ironically, however, the wet dream of Donald Trump to be remembered as somebody, darned near anybody, will also fail. He'll be remembered for being a fat, spoiled, mentally ill, child who ruined his nation with the help of ignorance. His ballroom will not get built. His Arc will not either. Greenland, which he will steal, will be set free. Melania will escape back to Europe to hide the disgrace of having associated with the man. The Trump family will bankruptcy itself into oblivion.
Cont:
Okay, something's happened.
Trump at Dovos said the United States “won’t use force” to take Greenland, but repeated his dumbass claims that the US needs it for national and international security. He said he would be “appreciative” if the world acquiesced to his desire to take over the territory. “Or, you can say no and we will remember.”
What does all that mean.
Sometime over the last 24 hours somebody got to Trump with news that if he went any further, they were invoking the 25th Amendment. It's about the only possibility.
The others might be that Congress would really move to impeach, or the military was prepared to tell him to pound sand.
But something happened. He was full batshit crazy over Greenland as of yesterday, and now he's not. He was apparently actually set to over a bridge too far and something held him back, for now.
The man needs to go. This is a chance for national redemption, but it won't last long. Those who were set to invoke the 25th, if they were, need to carry forward and do it.
Cont:
Hmmmm. . . Air Force One returned and landed due to an "electrical issue" prior to his gong to Davos.
That "electrical issue" was probably a direct communication that if he went to Davos and indicated war was coming he better stay in Switzerland.
Cont:
And I know so many people from Switzerland. Incredible place, incredible brilliant place. But I then realized that they're only good because of us.
The dimwitted emperor.
We barely dodged a bullet with this guy, remove the idiot now. Apply the 25th Amendment.
January 22, 2026
Trump at Davos:
Usually they say, 'he's a horrible dictator-type person.' But sometimes you need a dictator.
So are we really still playing around with this? Trump admits he's a dictator, and its obvious to everyone he's demented. There's no excuse left whatsoever for favoring this man remaining in office.
Let's reprise where we are, after the last several days.
Let's start off with this.
Ever since Congress demanded the Epstein files be released, most of which have not been, nearly every day brings a new horror. We started off with an invasion of a foreign power and removal of its head of state with no Congressional authorization, which is flatly illegal. In spite of the widely lauded praise for that, the raid only removed one man and his wife, while killing a bunch of people. The Socialist regime that man headed remains fully in power. Some may say its cooperating with Trump, but why would one criminal regime not cooperate with another if it benefits them both?
We were told at the time that we needed to do this as Venezuela was exporting drugs to the U.S. As soon as we kidnapped the leader, however, we were told that it was a great oil producing opportunity for the United States, and we are in fact seizing tankers and selling the oil, with the funds put in a bank in Qatar, outside those prying eyes in the U.S.
No sooner had that been accomplished than Donald Trump brought us right to the end of war with NATO, believing his own propaganda that the rest of the world would sit by if we seized Greenland, just as Germany thought nobody would fight over Poland in 1939, and Argentina thought the UK wouldn't fight over the Falklands in 1982. Indeed, the Falklands example is a particularly good one as the UK was actually moving toward an arrangement with Argentina before Argentina invaded, which ended that for all time.
While this was all going on, an ICE agent shot Renee Good three times killing her in Minneapolis. The mayor spoke out and now the mayor and the Governor are under Federal Criminal investigation by a corrupted justice system. Career Federal prosecutors are being fired, and even one of Trump's handpicked flunkies had walked out, although not over that.
Trump decided to go to Davos to lecture the Europeans, but as soon as his plane took off it returned with an "electrical problem".
Uh huh.
When he got to Davos suddenly he was no longer going to invade Greenland, but he was sticking to tariffs. . . until he suddenly didn't.
What message did the would be caudillo get when that plan returned.
There's a lot here to digest, but what we know is that Trump's actions do not benefit the United States and, as Mark Carney has stated, he's destroyed the post war order. The principal beneficiary of his actions is Russia, and nearly Russia alone The Russians may have pulled off the greatest example of spycraft of all time, but assisted by an American electorate that was made legitimately bitter by post 1973 events and made ignorant by actions of the much praised Ronald Reagan.
Reagan, to medical professionals, was showing signs of Alzheimer's in his second term. He was 83, however, and out of office when he admitted it to the public. His last public appearance, however, was in 1994, a couple of years after that, which is one that people who have viewed it lament. His appearance at that point in time wasn't any worse than Trump's right now.
Trump's behavior in the last two months has been nearly manic. Oh, let's be honest. It is manic. He very clearly, no matter what else is going on, has dementia. There's no question whatsoever. One person who knows him well, lawyer Ty Cobb, has stated:
I think there’s been a significant decline. He’s always been driven by narcissism. But I think the dementia and the cognitive decline are, you know, palpable, as do many experts, including many physicians.
Cobb also stated:
I don’t think there’s anybody outside of the United States who believes that Trump is sane.
So that's exactly where we are. We have a demented chief executive whose minions are not releasing a major file which his name shows up in, in violation of the law. His mind is complete mush and he launched us into one small war with little effect and nothing to be proud of, and nearly launched us into a major war with NATO which, in spite of our hubris, we may very well not have won (the U.S. hasn't actually won a war cleanly since the end of World War Two). Even if we had won it, which is not assured, it would have involved combat with Canada and occupying Canada would have entailed a terrorism campaign against the US that would kill Americans at home. Any such war would have besmirched our reputation forever and the world order has already been irreparably harmed to the detriment of Americans.
The man is insane and needs to be removed.
The question is why he isn't already gone. We can be quite assured that if there were sufficient votes, J. D. Vance, who sees his political fortunes evaporating by the minute and his current name likely to go down like Goering's would support it. So would Rubio, who has been mysteriously absent recently. But invoking the 25th Amendment would require the Vice President and a majority of the 15-member Cabinet ot declare the President the batshit crazy Trump unable to perform his duties. That means eight out of fifteen would have to go along with it. Those cabinet members are:
Secretary of StateMarco Rubio
Secretary of the TreasuryScott Bessent
Secretary of DefensePete Hegseth
Attorney GeneralPam Bondi
Secretary of the InteriorDoug Burgum
Secretary of AgricultureBrooke Rollins
Secretary of CommerceHoward Lutnick
Secretary of LaborLori Chavez-DeRemer
Secretary of Health and Human ServicesRobert F. Kennedy Jr.
Secretary of Housing and Urban DevelopmentScott Turner
Secretary of TransportationSean Duffy
Secretary of EnergyChris Wright
Secretary of EducationLinda McMahon
Secretary of Veterans AffairsDoug Collins
Secretary of Homeland SecurityKristi Noem
Administrator of the Environmental Protection AgencyLee Zeldin
Director of the Office of Management and BudgetRussell Vought
Director of National IntelligenceTulsi Gabbard
Director of the Central Intelligence AgencyJohn Ratcliffe
United States Trade RepresentativeJamieson Greer
Administrator of the Small Business AdministrationKelly Loeffler
So, until he's drooling and hitting on Kristi Noem, this is just going to get worse.
Congress could act, and if it was a Democratic Congress it undoubtedly would. Trump's only in office as Joe Biden moronically believed that his own dementia was somehow not there, a common trait of those who have dementia and the electorate blamed the Democrats for a lot of things, like inflation, that were outside of their control, and some things they really didn't like, like the whole transgender thing, that they were in control of. A totally befuddled Trump still knows that this November the GOP is going to be punished for the economy, for average people, getting worse, and he can't gasp that people really don't care if fat cats get fatter, which is the only sort of economic news that means anything to him. By this point in time an American electorate, which has a notoriously short memory, sees ICE in the streets, ICE shooting women in the head, Trump insulting the entire world, and their economic future going down the toilet. His plan is to try to disrupt the 2026 election, or even suspend it if he can, which he can't.
A sane group of Republican members of Congress would act right now to impeach Trump, like they did when Nixon was in office. But current Republicans in Congress are nearly all anemic castrati, with those at the top, like John Thune and John Barrasso providing prime example. Barrasso couldn't find his courage if he'd deposited in a safe deposit box. They're depending on the Democrats taking control i November so they can return to the more comfortable role of complaining about Democrats, and if the country goes in the shitter in the meantime, well at least they can hope to retain their careers.
January 24, 2026
A former Trump staffer from his first term is expressing concern that he'll launch a nuclear war, and reveals that in his first term the country came close to a war with North Korea.
January 26, 2026
While the country reeled from the shooting of Alex Pretti, the Mad King Donny was musing on the ballroom that will never be built.
Absolutely insane. Blood literally in the streets and this doddering buffoon is babbling about a structure whose refuse is going to be shoved into a big pile by a D11 and then dumped in a refuse pile.
How pathetic.
The NYT editorial from yesterday:
January 28, 2025
We stopped the conflict between Cambodia and Armenia. It was just starting and it was a bad one.
Donald Trump.
Cambodia and Armenia couldn't fight a war against each other if they both wanted to.
His mind is completely shot.
And with that really weird comment, we'll close out this portion of the roller coast ride with Mad King Donald.
Ernst Röhm, ardent Nazi, founder of the SA, and murdered in a Nazi purse. Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14393 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6591184
Greg Bovino (posted under fair use). Purged post Pretti killing.
The problem, of course, is that thugs commit their thuggery for regimes that are thuggish, sacrifice of a noted thug or not.
China is imposing a 55% tariff on some (it appears quite a bit of) beef from Brazil, Australia and the United States.
In Casper, Vintage Wine and Spirits and Wyoming Rib and Chop are closed as of this morning.
Donald Trump vetoed a water project in Colorado which was passed unanimously by Congress, and which is in a district that is represented by MAGA Lauren Boebert and which voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump mostly, it appears, as an act of revenge on Colorado.
The costs of at least 350 drugs in the U.S. are expected to rise in 2026.
Also, according to Trump Golf Tracker, Donald Trump has golfed 79 days out of 347 days since returning to office (22.8% of the presidency), at a taxpayer cost of $110,600,000.
The price of oil today is generally $57.41/bbl, below US profitability. Wyoming oil is generally at $57.84/bbl.
Coal rose to $107.50 /T on December 31, 2025, up 0.80% from the previous day. Over the past month, coal has fallen 0.78%, and is down 13.72% compared to the same time last year.
There's no part of this that will be a positive for the U.S. economy, or Wyoming's. There's been too much oil on the market now for years, which has made Wyoming's petroleum economy unstable. More oil will simply make it worse, much worse. Sinking a bunch of infrastructure into a foreign country will make it worse.
This will be an economic problem, if not a disaster.
And here's another GOP bit of great economic news:
Дональд Трамп — агент России, will be imposing tariffs on NATO members over his avarice for Greenland.
Дональд Трамп — агент России.
January 20, 2026
The stock market is collapsing and Treasury bonds are being sold off by the Danish retirement system due to the instability of the American budget.
If this becomes a general trend over the next thirty days the U.S. will go into a recession and the Dollar will cease to be the global reserve currency.
All this sparked by the demented avarice of the dimwit in the Oval Office.
January 21, 2026
Trump added $2.25 trillion to the national debt in his first year back in (illegitimate) charge.
