NBC Radio commentator Drew Pearson broke the news of a Soviet spy ring had been operating in Canada transmitting American atomic secrets from Ottawa to Moscow..
SS Commander Friedrich Jeckeln, 51 was hanged in public at Pobeda Square in Riga, along with five of his officers.
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253 ice fishermen, who had set up a "fishing village" on an ice floe in the Bjorko Sound in Finland, were killed when a gale swept the settlement out into the Baltic Sea. On the same day, George Grey, brother of British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, was killed by a lion while hunting in Africa.
Mexican revolutionary Abraham Gonzalez moved his office to the Caples building in El Paso, Texas.
California adopted the bear flag as its state flag.
California's flag is frankly weird. The state was only a republic very briefly, and grizzly bears were driven out of the state long, long ago.
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The last edition of this was already sufficiently confusing that a new one is in order.
In this one, when we list the candidates to start with, we're not going to try to comment on each for the most part, as we've already done that in the prior edition. Having said that, we've made some exceptions.
February 1, 2026.
U.S. Senate
GOP
Harriet Hageman. On our don't vote for list.
Jimmy Skovgard.
U.S. House of Representatives
GOP
Jillian Balow
Chuck Gray. On our don't vote for list.
Reid Ransner. On our don't vote for list.
David Giralt
Independant
Daniel Workman.
Governor
GOP
Eric Barlow: At least so far, Barlow seems to be by far the best choice for this office. I'm seeing some of his signs around.
Brent Bien. On our don't vote for list.
Meggan Degenfelder. On our don't vote for list. Degenfelder is from the relatively hard right and has been tarred with the brush of a Trump endorsement, which she really doesn't seem fully comfortable with. She may be aware that it's problematic.
Democratic Party
Gabriel Green: Green is listed here for the first time. He's associated with the DINO movement, so while he's running as a Democrat, it's "in name only". Indeed, he founded the state's DINO movement, and he might be the only person to run under that banner. He's aggressive in this strategy, and is nearly as hard on the Democrats as he is the Republicans.
This is an interesting approach, and I've wondered why somebody hasn't tried it before. It'll be interesting to see how he uses it. Many of the state's past Democratic Governors were as conservative as any Republican, in actual terms, so there is something to be exploited here.
Independant
Joseph Kibler. On our don't vote for list.
Kibler announced as a Republican, but now is running as an independant.
Kibler is a carpetbagger and has the typical carpetbagger "I just moved here from California for all your freedom and now I'm going to run things".
Go back to California.
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On this race, WyoFile has asked the candidates, asd seems to have caught all of them, on what they think about the Freedom Caucus budgetary nonsense.
Where Wyoming’s gubernatorial candidates stand on budget cuts: WyoFile asked the five candidates whether they supported some of the more drastic proposals lawmakers will consider in the upcoming legislative session.
Treasurer
GOP
Curt Meier
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In election related news, Chuck Gray turned over the entire state's voter rolls to the Federal Government.
UPDATE: Gray defends voter roll compliance after Wyoming’s League of Women Voters slams transfer
I'd really question the legality of this, but if the Trump Administration ordered states to run over kittens with bulldozers Gray would gleefully comply. His actions provoked the criticism of the League of Women Voters which Gray accused of being liberal fanatics, his standard retort to everything.
We're stuck with Gray until the end of his term, assuming that he doesn't get elected to the US House, which we should dearly hope he does not. If he fails to get the House, we can be assured that he will not run for Secretary of State again, as his only point in running for the office in the first place was to try to position himself for higher office. He'll wonder off to some other state at that point.
In another developments, Texas continued a nationwide trend of Democrats advancing at the state level in advance of the November election. In a district that voted heavily from Trump in the last general election, a Democratic candidate defeated a Trump endorsed Republican candidate whom Gov. Abbot had attempted to assist. This means that the GOP holds the Texas Senate by a mere five seats. They hold the House by 22 seats. Some of these state legislatures are going to flip in the next election.
More locally, Harriet Hageman has been taking flak at town halls, with the one in Casper directly confronting here on her claims to be a "Constitutional lawyer", a status itself which I've never really figured out what it was supposed to mean.
February 3, 2026
Donald Trump has called for nationalizing the elections.
Chuck Gray turned Wyoming's voters rolls over to the Federal Government, which is seeking them. Wyoming apparently was the first to comply with this outrageous request which not all states intend to honor.
This should disqualify Gray from being considered for anything further in Wyoming, right down to Walmart greeter.
Ranser is running piles of images of himself with rifles on his social media, apparently seeking to boost the view that he's an outdoorsman. Perhaps he is, but brings up the necessity of asking certain questions. He's also come out with a statement that public lands should always remain in public hands, which I fully agree with but which is surprising given Ranser's generally slavish loyalty to the extreme far right. This may be his genuine view, or he may realize that this is what the overwhelming majority of Wyomingites' hold.
There's clearly a current effort to take on the Wyoming Freedom Caucus that's developing. It's late to the game, but it's definitely on. A lot of focus has been given to it's funding which is overwhelmingly from out of state organizations with a far right political view.
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Trump is insane.
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.
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.
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 State Marco Rubio
Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth
Attorney General Pam Bondi
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick
Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lee Zeldin
Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe
United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer
Administrator of the Small Business Administration Kelly Loeffler
Chief of Staff Susie Wiles
We took a look at whom we thought might be willing to act to save then nation some time ago, but frankly every day that goes by makes this worse. For example, we thought that Bessent might be willing to go along, but by now he's so tainted by the shit he's had to spout out because Rubio, probably, is refusing to do so, that for many of these people they're at the point where they're just going down in defeat in the bunker. A few of these people, in addition, are really bad people and hardcorse believes in what they're doing.
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.
February 3, 2026
King Donny hasn't seemed to notice, but his endorsement is becoming the golden kiss of death all over the country. This past week a solidly Republican Senate district in Texas voted overwhelming for the Democrat, the Trump endorsement meaning nothing. In Wyoming Megan Degenfelder is sort of nervous, rather obviously, about Trump's embrace, and she should be.
Which brings us to this:
Trump has been going after Thomas Massie as he's not a Trump toady like crazy. He's criticized the marriage before, which is pretty rich for a man of Trump's obvious disregard for the meaning of marriage.
Massie replied.
Who knew Carolyn would also get free rent in Trump’s head when she married me! I guess that’s just one of the perks. secure.thomasmassie.com/donate
Trump is clearly unhinged.
And with this latest disgusting outburst by Donald Trump, we'll close this edition.
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