Anniversary and Consequences

It has been five years since Donald Trump tried to overthrow the government. He failed then, but we did not hold him accountable, and he is back in charge, and fucking things up as bad as ever.

Venezuela? This is naked aggression, serving no good purpose. What does the administration (one hesitates to say "Trump" in this case, because there is no there there anymore, and everyone knows it) think they will get out of this? Oil? I suppose there is a chance, but the chaos created is more likely to make it more expensive than less. The drug running gag was never real. An excuse to deport hispanics? I am sure this is Stephen Miller's dream, but they have been doing that for a year, this isn't likely to help that much. I don't know. All we are doing is risking the creation of a long, ugly, occupation, alienation from even more of the world - for no gain, and without even the flimsy make believe excuses we used to invade Iraq in 2003. 

That said - talking about Venezuela means there is less talk about the Epstein files. Less talk about Trump's dementia. Less talk about the sagging economy. Less talk about ICE. Less talk about Jack Smith and January 6, 2021. All this fills up the airwaves with noise about Venezuela, giving the press, especially TV news, the excitement of a war - so, yes, it is a distraction.

But it is not likely to be a very effective distraction. The Epstein files are too big a deal to stop being an issue. Trump's dementia is not getting better, and this just reminds everyone how old and feeble he is. He and his cronies can't help themselves from reminding everyone what idiots they are - using this as an excuse to threaten Cuba and Mexico and Denmark and god knows who else - everything about it reminds us that Trump and his boys are like petty gangsters beating up random citizens to get the rest to pay them off. They might say they are defending Democracy in Venezuela, but they immediately start talking about stealing Greenland - I guess Democracy isn't the issue. None of this can go well - the rest of the world suffers, but Trump's gang won't get any benefits. The economy is not going to get better. The situation in Venezuela is far more likely to descend into chaos and violence than not. 

Of course, what it really means, is likely that Madura's check hasn't cleared yet. Trump has pardoned plenty of monsters already, sometimes for ideology, but usually, for ransom. Kidnaping Madura makes most sense on those terms - snatch him, and wait for someone to pay Trump and company off. They probably think they will get the oil out of this, as a bribe to not kidnap anyone else - but this is only going to work as long as people keep paying. 

Enough. End by saying that obviously Trump should be impeached over this. At some point, congress is going to have to stop calculating their odds, and just fight against him, any way than can. Trump should have been in prison in 2021; he should have been frog-marched out of the White House on January 6, 2021. When we didn't that, we should have made a point of getting him into stir as quickly as was seemly afterwards. We did not, and are paying for it. This time - we will have to do better, or we are going to have to deal with some scumbag imitator every 4 years for perpetuity. Treat him like the traitor he is. 

Rebooting the Calendar

Happy new year, world. 

I am not sorry to see 2025 go. 2025 sucked. From beginning to end - dominated by Donald Trump, doing all he can to fuck this country up six ways to Sunday, in the most embarrassing, shameful, idiotic way imaginable - what a nightmare. Is there any way this gets better? Well, there will be mid-terms this year, presumably, and if Trump doesn't send in the army, he is likely to lose all the congressional support he has. Though for that to matter, congress and Democrats have to do something - not just fend off the worst, but find a way to break the son of a bitch. I don't know. They should have done that in 2021 - he should have been frog-marched from the White House, probably on January 7, but January 21 would have worked. Letting him and his minions get away with trying to overthrow the government brought us to the disaster we are in today.

That's Trump. My pessimism about Democrats might be a function of being in Maine, and watching the ancient and infuriating Susan Collins running against the equally ancient, but usually pretty respectable Janet Mills, though Mills is likely to slot in with all the other ancient and respectable Democrats in congress. Who wants that? Unfortunately the most prominent alternative to those two is Graham Plattner, a guy who thought it was a good idea to get the Third SS Panzer badge emblazoned on his chest. Sure, it was a long time ago and he was drunk in Croatia, where I imagine this happens all the time - still, man, still! It took him until this year to do anything about it, and he ran his mouth more than once in those years and - I don't know. If he had ever served in any elected office in his life, we would at least have a track record to look at, but no. He's an "outsider"! He talks a good game - Bernie bro stuff - but that's talk, and a particularly cheap kind of talk at that. To me, he comes off as a shameless opportunist whose only real value is his own personal advancement. It is convenient for him to play the outsider, and to his credit he's playing the lefty outsider, but in the extremely unlikely event he ended up in Washington, I'd put my money on him turning into, at best, John Fetterman, at worst, Tulsi Gabbard. Though apparently he plans to wear a suit. 

What a hell hole this country has become.

Well, there is more to life than politics. There is, for example, Sport. As it happened, 2025 was a pretty entertaining year for sport. A very cool baseball season, with the local nine doing well, producing one of the most exciting young players in years, in Roman Anthony - promising to hang around. But all of baseball was fun this year - a fun season, a fantastic post season, lots of good young players coming up - it promises to stay fun, at least until they shut it down for a strike or lockout in a couple years. But there's a couple years before that happens. Beyond baseball, it has been a pretty good year locally - the C's are respectable, even with their best player out for most of the year, the B's are competent again, and the Patsies are back on top as if the post Brady years never happened. How thrilling!

2026 is also when the World Cup comes back to the US. Normally, that would be thrilling, but this year - yikes. No. The tournament itself is ridiculous, bloated and confusing, covering three countries and way too many teams. I haven't followed soccer close enough to know what to expect, and there isn't a lot making me do so. That and the fact that this is three straight world cups help in dictatorships. FIFA, of course, paid their proper bribe to the grifter in chief, but that is to be expected. Still - when push comes to shove I am more likely than not to get caught up in the fun. Maybe.

And? There is tech. My tech year has been a shit show. IPad dead; TV receiver dead; Mac mini dead; laptop screen dead - the cat bit it. Thanks, cat! That was fixed at least. And last week, my coffee grinder died! maybe the most horrible failure of them all! Alas - the wide world of technology does not seem to be doing any better. Everything is AI this and AI that, and it all sucks. This might even be made worse by the ways generative AI poisons the very idea of AI - which, I am told, can do many good things in other uses. I don't know enough to judge. I do know that that there are not a lot of technologies in 2025 that aero better than the same techs were in 2015 or 2005 even. Yeah, faster, lighter, sometimes cheaper - but I have seen people drop laptops and shatter the screens completely and the machines keep on working for years - mine died because the cat bit it!

All right; that's enough. It is time for 2026, which has almost infinite room to get better, though has not lack of ways to get worse. Let's hope for the best and get on with it. This year, let me try to be a better person. Try to post more often, once again; eat better, get more exercise, read more, write more, see more movies, pat the cat, be nice to people, backup my work (oh god) and go Red Sox! Good luck, 2026, you're going to need it.