"Russia just sent a nuclear missile over but first we have a weather alert"

 It's amazing how much time the news devotes to the weather.  At the top of most newscasts these days.  "A house exploded in Brooklyn today but first we have a weather alert."  They constantly catastrophize normal weather patterns.  It's gonna be hot it's gonna be cold it's gonna rain.  So next four days it's gonna be in the 90s up here in the Northeast with some humidity.  OK.  Gotta talk about it every 15 minutes though.  It's not like it's never happened before.  Lots of the more celeb weather people pull in good salaries I guess they gotta put on a show.  Unless there's gonna be a major weather event the weather should be treated  more like sports.  I don't understand the jetstream I just wanna know if I should bring an umbrella with me today or not.

Gen. Trump wants to send more troops into American cities

 I guess the National Guard isn't good enough.  I thought they were troops.  Trump wants to militarize more US cities in response to the growing ICE protests coast to coast.  ICE is actually a kind of rogue agency created in the wake of 9/11, an offshoot of DHS.  Basically what Trump wants to do is set up a police, a military state with a vast ai surveillance system, an Orwellian database of every single living American courtesy of Palantir Tech.  Laura Loomer is down with this.  So why do the vast majority of conservatives still support Trump despite these existential threats to freedom and privacy?  They're not really that libertarian to begin with.  This is not to say they need to be full-blown libertarian but they should be more libertarian than they are.  More stuff should bother them but it doesn't.  Instead they constantly fall back on blaming the media and the Democrats.  So what happens if Trump gives the go-ahead for Marines to shoot rioters in US cities?  Will Charlie Kirk cheer?

Dark days ahead.  I hope I'm wrong.

Trump - the social unrest president

 He just loves to agitate the population doesn't he.  Bypassing CA state and local government he sends in the National Guard to quell the LA riots/protests.  On top of that he sends in a few hundred Marines - the few the proud.  Folks are rightly upset over Homan's goon squads and their operations in LA and ICE protests have now gone coast to coast.  Trump wants American citizens to get used to a military presence in American cities.  He wants to set up a police, a military state that's what this is about.  An AI advanced surveillance system to go along with that and too many Americans are already willing to give up their rights and freedoms for added security and safety.  Govern me harder Daddy!

Maybe one of these days Trump will get around to tackling the cost-of-living but I doubt it.

Why Dems pick up the midterms

 Still aways away but closer than you think.  Dems currently in disarray and panic mode but they really don't have to do much if President Trump continues on his present course.  Every time I go to the grocery store it hurts.  Bought a few things today and it came to just under $100.  Didn't even buy cat food.  Trump is focused on other things though.  He changed the name of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  He's fighting Harvard.  Changing geographical names.  A bloated budget bill with ai deregulation.  Tariffing the world.  Building more ICE centers and a laundry list of other things.  Cultural tangential stuff with no real impact on the average American.  No trans soldiers.  Scale back the Jackie Robinson walks through history.  Just let Trump be Trump.  MAGA becomes a historical footnote.  Maybe a future category on Jeopardy. 

Conservatives got everything they ever dreamed of but didn't know what to do with it.  No focus or narrow pragmatic workable agenda just Righties gone wild.  The freakoff should end around the midterms.  Patience.  They'll blame the immigrants in the end;)

If this is conservatism then I have tits

 Got off the Trump train awhile back ever since Gulf of America.  Many of you are still on it happily blowing the whistle.  A new OTA channel came on my TV the other night - Newsmax 2.  Must be important.  Watched a little bit and my impression is I don't think Newsmax fully understands the idea that people have the right to protest proposed Medicaid cuts.  A few channels over I have OAN.  It's usually at this time I'll watch the infomercial for Omega XL or the Emeril Lagasse air fryer.  Don't know why almost the whole conservative movement has hitched their wagon to Trump.  Sure there are some lone critics and holdouts here and there like Glenn Greenwald and Candace Owens but for the most part it's this massive nonstop collective right-wing orgasm.  A real freakoff.

I'm not against the idea of a Golden Dome but how do you fire tens of thousands of federal workers shutter entire agencies and then say we need a multi-billion dollar Golden Dome to maybe even include our neighbor up North? The tariffs are confusing and need to end but Trump wants businesses to just shut up and absorb the extra costs without passing them along to the consumer.  Executive orders don't strike me as having the quality of durable law, comes totally out of his whimsy and not the Congress but he feels this is the way to govern and on and on it goes.

Geeeeeez......

How did Biden's prostate cancer turn turbo overnight?

 Latest conspiracy theory.  How did Biden's A-team of doctors miss the early signs?  The PSA is known to be one of the more accurate medical tests out there.  My tiny bit of medical knowledge proferred here.  Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers among men but is often the most manageable except when it turns aggressive and even that takes time so how did Biden get a clean bill of health in July of 2024?  I believe presidents even have oncologists on staff now so did this just show up now and at such an advanced stage?  So many people are now saying he had the cancer while in the WH the whole idea being to keep Trump out of the WH in the first place so it was covered up basically.

Can Woodward maybe get to the bottom of this?

Papa Trump

 I had to cogitate on this one.  By now we've all seen the ai-generated image of Pope Donald.  In and of itself this is not that offensive.  Put it in the mildly amusing folder but I think the timing is bad and he seems to have succeeded in angering the bishops.  In my view it's unbecoming of a serious Administration.  Imagine if Uncle Joe had done this.

Just my 2 cents.

Katy Perry in Space

 Could be a TV show.  The news is stranger by the day.  They just brought the dire wolf back from extinction.  What else can or might they resurrect?  Maybe they can bring back Cro-Magnon Man.  Upper management.   Maybe he can run for office.  I know we have that already.  My friend said once in the car they want to bring the Woolly Mammoth back.  I thought too much YouTube thought he was talking smack.  Maybe they can clone Homan.  Five Homans can get the job done five times faster.  Now when you google something you get an AI Overview.  How to make quiche.  AI the Chef.  AI the Carpenter.   AI the Plumber.  Does Trump plan on building some kind of vast prison system on Greenland?

I can't believe I'm living.

Oy vey! - Team Trump giving off those creepy Orwellian vibes

 Fresh on the heels of almost ruining millions of Americans 401k plans (90 day tariff pause) Team Trump has announced they are going to be monitoring the social media accounts of immigrants seeking permanent legal status as well as the online musings of foreign students.  They're going to be looking for antisemitic posts.  Watch them conflate legitimate criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza with support for Hamas and Hezbollah and other terror groups.  No wonder Bibi was grinning on his recent trip to the WH.  I say this if the Trump Administration is going to get all pervy about people's privacy at least include a middle finger emoji at the end of the post.  The Peeps Administration:)

Maybe next time add a Houthi to a group chat?

 Maybe someday you'll be able to get Yemen war plans on your Smart TV.  If I was new to blogging struggling to come up with a name during the early days of the 2nd Trump Administration it would have just hit me in the shower,

You Can't Make This Shit Up

Meanwhile JD Vance is going to join his wife Usha in Greenland for a creepy visit upcoming. See the sights dine on whatever Greenlanders eat and exert some pressure.  A kind of friendly Mafioso sitdown.  Is  Musk going to abolish the DMV?  The dismantled DOE workers where do they wind up slicing deli meats?  I get the OAN channel crystal clear in these parts and some nights host Riley Lewis looks like he's going to uncork one.  The erstwhile sensible National Review is all MAGA now.  Lonely.  Maybe I'll go smoke a pipe with Mitch McConnell. 

You know it would all make sense if I was involved in a horrible car accident and wound up in a comatose state and this was all a bad dream.  The Orange Man is real though.  It'll all be over in 3 years and 10 months if we have a country left.

It's not conservatism it's rule by oligarch

 Breaking with my fellow conservative bloggers.  I do not celebrate thousands of federal workers across multiple agencies losing their jobs.  I do not support massive tariffs levied against our allies.  I am against trying to censor and punish pro-Palestinian speech on campus.  Re Trump's tailspin into dementia or whatever it is if Canada and Greenland did become U.S. states how many electoral votes would they hold?  How would the new Canadians and Greenlanders lean politically?  I'm thinking Canada to the Left.  WHO elected Elon Musk???  He's our de facto president on the domestic side of things.  The sentiment among many people I've talked to is he needs to go and these are middle-of-the-road people not radicals.  Go back to running Tesla and Space X and whatever else.  Go to Mars and start a colony if you want I'm not a fanboy.  We need to grow up.  Stop blaming Dems and lefties all the time.  Trump's nuttery is the issue at least for now.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

It'll probably take them two hours to get into their own portal

 Mixed messaging from the Trump Administration

Illegal migrants now required to register an online account with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency or face fines or imprisonment or both.  Goes into a big DHS databse.  Part of the statement says that if they leave now they might be able to come back and enjoy the American Dream.  Seems more of a call for self-deportation.  Drop the head of lettuce and go back.  If not then at least register an account with us.  Civil liberties groups are concerned.  I'm a little confused.

What to do in the meantime

 

Some of the federal workers who have been fired have been offered their jobs back.  It's all getting very confusing.  Meanwhile Musk is going to use some AI program to evaluate workers' responses as to how they justify their jobs.  What does ChatGPT think?

Government by executive order

 Trump's executive orders continue at a dizzying pace.  Covers all situations and issues great and small.  Might issue an order stating SNL should go off the air.  Trump operating in this make-believe monarchical framework of his.

Reading A LOT about ICE raids.  One news item said they went into some Chicago elementary school later amended to oh no that was the Secret Service.  What would either of them be doing at a grade school?  Is Trump planning a visit?  Did some student write an anti-Trump essay?

Not getting the TikTok ban temporarily on hold.  Has to do with data mining by the Chinese government.   So the Chinese government peers into my boring life and today learns I plan on cleaning the attic.  Not sure how this violates the national security though but I'm not as bright as the smarty-pants over at the National Review.  YouTube is funny.  Watched some attic ladder installation videos last night.  One said so easy a 10-year old could do it all you need is a drill a saw and a couple of other things then you'll see some false comment like "thanks Frank the Handyman I did it."

I'm just a rambling man;)

Diddy was going to perform but he couldn't make it

 (Alternative title: Rough Day For Shaw)

Quite a pageant.  The swearing-in ceremony was quite long.  Had a strong religious, Christian flavor.  An all day affair.  Watched Trump's Inaugural Address.  A lot to go through comment accordingly.  Wants to put an American flag on Mars and Musk was ecstatic.  Said in his speech there are only two genders and that he would sign an executive order declaring such.  Who knew such a simple biological fact would be so controversial.  There was the parade and then an address by Steve Witkoff Trump's special envoy to the Middle East who was instrumental in the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.  Earlier Trump had already signed his first few executive orders back at the office.  These were mostly technical in nature having to do with things like cabinet and sub-cabinet appointments the most notable being going forward all flags will be flown at full-staff on Inauguration Day.  I had hoped to publish something earlier in the day but it was a long wait before he signed a few more executive orders at the Capitol Arena the most notable this time being sending a letter to the UN saying we are withdrawing from the Paris Climate Treaty then it was off to the Oval Office to sign a large number of other executive orders.

A LONG day.  TikTok also back online thanks to Trump at least for the time being.  Sounds like a deal is in the works.

What happened to the drones?

 Lots of assorted topics out there not really coalescing into a blogpost per se.  The LA fires and the politics of the LA fires.  Elon Musk opiner-at-large now wading into British politics and the groomer gang scandal which is at least ten years old.  Melania's outfit at the Jimmy Carter funeral.  Congestion pricing in NYC.  TikTok.  Just off the top of my head 17,000 doctors signed a letter opposing RFK Jr.'s nomination to be HHS Sec'y.  That one kind of surprised me.  Diddy updates.  Mangione.  My God it's COLD outside!!!  The Trump Follies.  News cycle going too fast for me.

The drone thing.  Wha' happened?

For your consideration

 Considerable discussion has been given to the Dead Internet Theory.  My own view we're at least halfway there.  As far as conspiracy theories go there are scraps of truth.  This is a real post btw.  I really do have to cut my sidewalk grass in Yonkers.

But what about our guest lettuce pickers so our H-1B visa holders can enjoy their salads?

MAGA CIVIL WAR ERUPTS

First off Trump hired some Indian-born foreign guy to be his ai advisor.  Now presidents need ai advisors?  Musk and Ramaswamy are all for extending the stays of our highly skilled foreign workers in the tech field.  Musk says a shortage of them is the main problem facing Silicon Valley and Ramaswamy called American culture mediocre (think Family Guy and Judge Judy - editor).  MTG kind of agrees with them.  Trump ally and hard-righter Laura Loomer, Matt Gaetz and the hard-core MAGA base say they're straying from the original MAGA policy on immigration.  Nikki Haley took issue with Ramaswamy's X post.  Things are getting heated.  Pass the popcorn.

BUT WHAT DOES HOMAN THINK???

No drones over Yonkers yet

 If there were I would simply chalk it up to Yonkers keeping track of who's not cutting the grass along their sidewalk and who's late on their property taxes.

Mysterious SUV-sized drones have been spotted flying over areas of New Jersey and New York.  Aliens?  Some weird social experiment being run by a university?  Google?  Iran?  China?  Putin?  The FBI?  The CIA?  The military?  Some brilliant 10-year old young Sheldon type kid operating a fleet of drones from his parents' basement?  A plan to rescue Diddy?  Some type of Trump illegal immigrants surveillance project?  Is Homan operating these things?

People are alarmed.  Congress is concerned.   The FBI doesn't have answers.  Somebody knows something. 

Health insurance is great until you get sick

 That's the sentiment of many.  In the wake of the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson last Wednesday outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel many folk have gone on social media and unleashed a torrent of vitriol against the health insurance industry in general and Brian Thompson and United Healthcare in particular.  Seems some ai-driven program denied the claims of at least one-third of United Healthcare subscribers who actually had to use their insurance.  The wonders of our health insurance system - you pay into the program your whole life, you get really sick one day and finally get a notice in the mail "Claim Denied" and have to foot the bill yourself.   You're not Diddy.  Never understood how so many cancer survivors and their families use up their entire life savings and eventually go bankrupt.  I thought that's why we have health insurance.  Hannity would probably say at least that's not socialism.  Health care in America.  I thought Obama fixed all that.  I can't wait for the Singularity.