The Memory Hole

 

      I remember everything about January 6, 2021 just as I recall everything about September 11, 2001. It was the second time within 20 years that our nation was attacked. Except, the last time, it was attacked from within by 1600 of the stupidest people who ever lived and, by proxy, a discolored, demented  criminal named Donald fucking Trump.

      The pawns, of course, went to trial and many were sent to prison while Trump, a bug-eyed psychopath named John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani never saw the inside of a courtroom, much less a jail cell.

      Congressmen, albeit the more sensible ones, realized who'd kept them alive during a riot that wound up killing nine people. It was the DC police who fought a mob of lunatics and were handed an impossible task: Securing the Capitol. The rules of engagement handed down from the DoD were simple: Not to engage the mob.

     Congress swiftly moved to give some of the officers gold medallions. Several Republicans voted against it while pretending to be outraged over the word "insurrection" (even though that's exactly what January 6 was). Then Congress commissioned a plaque to be made commemorating the police's role in guarding the Capitol building and all in it.

     Then it disappeared.

     Since it was commissioned by an Act of Congress, by law it was supposed to be displayed. But Mike Johnson hasn't unveiled it. Trump's law firm, formerly the DOJ, is trying to dismiss an officer's lawsuit to display the plaque. Now congressmembers are reduced to putting up crude facsimiles of it on their office doors.

     It's rumored to be sitting in storage. More likely, it's sitting on a landfill somewhere in Virginia.

     So, what happened? Is it really up to the majority party to put up a plaque created by an Act of Congress and mandated to be displayed? Why was the Republican Party allowed to flaunt the law? Who got rid of it? Who decreed that it never be displayed?

     Why wasn't it put up during the Biden administration?

     And why are the feckless cunts of the Democrat Party not raising a bigger stink about this?

     Every day that goes by without that plaque displayed on a federal building is an insult to the men and women who put their lives on the line (and, in five cases, lost their lives) that day. 

     But the invertebrates in the worthless Republican caucus are in such lockstep with Donald Trump, the guy who'd started the riot five years ago today, that they can't bring themselves to put up a plaque reminding us all of perhaps their Dear Leader's greatest crime.

     What a pack of wet-legged cunts.

Dead Men Do Tell Tales

 

     Two days ago, as he was taking a brief vacation from the front nine at Mar a Lago, the rotting corpse of Donald Trump was pulled from his casket and propped up to hold a press conference. And when a reporter asked the stubbornly semi-sentient cadaver if he'd notified oil companies about Venezuela's invasion, the waste of trace elements said, 

      "Before and after. They want to go in and they’re going to do a great job."

     Then they installed him back in his coffin in preparation of the next chapter of Weekend at Bernie's.

     So there you have it. Once again, it was never about fentanyl (which is primarily made in Mexico, not Venezuela) and it certainly wasn't about running afoul of the 1934 National Firearms Act pertaining to just two kinds of weapons. It's about the oil. It was always about the oil.

     This was an admission that would be stunning if one refuses to consider Trump's naked corruption. What his admission essentially confirmed was that US Delta Force operators risked their lives and Venezuelans lost their lives so Trump could reward his wealthiest donors after all the bribes they lavished on him for his ballroom.

     Since Trump bypasses Congress any and every time he thinks he doesn't absolutely need it, it shouldn't surprise any one that Trump never gave a heads-up to the Gang of Eight, much less get permission from Congress to engage in what's nothing more or less than an act of war upon a sovereign nation.

     What sets Trump apart from other right wing scumbags that had illegally invaded sovereign nations is that Trump is brazenly telling everyone what the real reasons were. Whereas his predecessors hid behind mealy-mouthed rationales such as democracy and so forth, Trump is coming out and admitting it was done at the behest of oil companies. There doesn't seem to be an exit strategy in place, with little to no heed being paid to the fate of the people of Venezuela.

     And, as geopolitical analysts have already conjectured, Trump's invasion of Venezuela could wind up giving a giant permission structure for other authoritarian nations to invade other countries such as Russia with Ukraine and China with Taiwan. The ripple effect could be catastrophic.

     If it wasn't for the deaths and devastation in Venezuela, it would be comical watching an illegitimate president accusing someone else of being an illegitimate president and that Maduro's prosecution is literally being held right around the corner from where Trump himself was prosecuted, and convicted, of fraud.

     And today, we're hearing that the DOJ is quietly backing off one of its key charges against Maduro, being the head of “Cartel de los Soles”. And the reason why they're backing off those charges is that the government is finally coming to the conclusion that the “Cartel de los Soles” doesn't exist any more than does antifa. It's more like a verbal designation to describe high-ranking Venezuelan officials who'd enriched themselves through drug shipments. The name translates to "cartel of the suns", a mocking reference to the suns that Venezuelan generals wear to denote rank.

      So, just days into Maduro's and his wife's kidnapping, the federal government has to retool its charges, just as it had to with James Comey, because of Trump's "ready fire aim" bullshit.

      We could be hopeful and dream of the day when Trump gets impeached for the third time over this murderous stunt. We can hope that he trades places with Maduro some day at that courthouse in the Southern District of New York.

       But we've been there before, haven't we? 

Ink and Iron Has Arrived

      This is the unboxing of my newest novel, Ink and Iron, just arrived from the printer in Las Vegas. The formatting, indents and margins are perfect and it's a substantial read at 455 pages. Note my new editor, Midnight, in the foreground. I just rescued her last night and she's eating us out of house and home. She's also a real cuddle bug and is very comfortable with people. Anyway, Ink and Iron is available in paperback for just  $12.99 or on Kindle for $4.99.

Good Times at Pottersville

 

Easy Come, Easy Go

 

BREAKING: Trump has been officially stripped of his FIFA Peace Prize. pic.twitter.com/2lMODA5B5n

— Former Republican 🇺🇸 (@Sjacobs2020) January 3, 2026

Tell Me If This Sounds Familiar

 

 

    Another oil-rich nation invaded in the name of regime change. Another dictator with a cheesy mustache toppled. Another pack of lies to justify invading said oil-rich nation. Does any of this sound familiar?

     Seven years ago almost to the day, DNI Tulsi Gabbard warned us about this. Of course, at the time, she was just winding up her presidential ambitions in preparation for crashing and burning in the 2020 Democratic primaries but one has to admit she was right.

     Early this morning, America did what one would think was the unthinkable and we invaded and bombed a sovereign nation and even kidnapped its head of state. Nicholas Maduro is now in New York awaiting charges of trafficking in drugs. We even kidnapped his wife.

     Let's get one thing straight- I'm no fan of Maduro. Like Trump last year and 2016, he robbed his way to power and nakedly stole Venezuela's last election. And, like Trump, he tanked his own nation's economy, not because Socialism doesn't work, but simply because he's a corrupt asshole.

     But regime change spearheaded by the US government has a very, very poor history. Iran. Vietnam. Chile. El Salvador. Nicaragua. Iraq. Afghanistan. The list goes on. Since WWII, the United States, usually under Republican leadership, has done the bidding of giant corporate interests whether it be fruit companies or oil cartels. In the 80+ years since the end of WWII, we've toppled no fewer than 60 democratic nations virtually every time their leaders don''t toe the right wing corporate line.

     Venezuela is the latest casualty of those interests.

     As with Iraq 23 years ago and their phantom weapons of mass destruction, we, too, have invented a false rationale to bomb the capital city of a sovereign nation and capture its head of state. Now Trump is saying we're going to "run" Venezuela as if it's a distressed company under receivership. This is coming from a buffoon who can't even run the United States except as a banana republic.

     It started with the US military bombing back to the Stone Age over 20 boats, probably all fishing boats, out of the water under the guise of combating drug trafficking. Keep in mind, this is being engineered by a clown who'd pardoned no fewer than four drug dealers.

     And now, Trump is openly admitting it was all about capturing Venezuela's oil reserves, the largest in the world. He's not even pretending, any more. It's all about the oil, always has been, always will be.

     Just like Iraq.

     Did Venezuela need regime change? Absolutely, it did. But their fate, their destiny, as Gabbard said seven years ago, should've been left in their hands, not in our grasping ones.

Ink and Iron Is Out

 

     In case you've been wondering where I've been for the past week, look at the lead image above (click on it for a high-resolution image). Not long after I wrapped up The Final Bullet, I began working on Ink and Iron, the next installment in the Scott Carson saga. The Kindle edition went live yesterday and the paperback edition hit the market this morning. 

     The revisions and formatting were, as usual, a nightmare, with my copy editor not sending me the edits until just before Christmas. Then, even after those were made, I had to wrestle with margins and indents with the native file and all the technical bullshit you never see in the movies. So that's why I've been MIA this past week. But, finally, all my work paid off yesterday.

     The synopsis:

     "In the wake of the Great Molasses Flood of January 1919, Boston faces another crisis. No sooner than the city’s North End cleans up the disaster’s devastation: The city’s police are taking steps toward a historic strike that threatens to unleash anarchy that ineffectual Mayor Andrew Peters is powerless to stop. Bad pay, long hours and inhumane working conditions are the source of their discontent.

     Stepping into the storm clouds is Moira Delmonico, a young Socialist cub reporter with the Boston Globe. Moira’s not interested in making friends among Boston’s power elite, especially future president and Governor Calvin Coolidge. He’s vowed to crush the strike by any means, including deploying 5000 members of the State Guard. Moira has skin in the game: Her beau, Patrolman Tommy Donahue, is one of the 1137 police who will strike. Moira risks her new job with every article she writes.
     Joined by her mother, legendary New York Times crime journalist, Kelley Delmonico, and her brother, NYC officer Angelo Delmonico, Jr., Moira confronts the corrupt Brahmins on Beacon Hill. Throwing in her lot with Boston bootleggers the Gustin Gang, she battles the governor, Commissioner and a shadowy strike-breaker named Callahan.
     Fueling the chaos is a series of murders of active and retired policemen. Found on their bodies is a note warning against affiliation with the American Federation of Labor. The strike becomes a major turning point in American history, with deaths, injuries and hundreds of thousands in damage. And young Moira’s career in journalism may end barely after it’s started."

     It's a substantial read, weighing in at just under 142,000 words, and it surprised me to learn that I wrote the first draft in just under five months. And it offers a different slant on the 1919 police strike than the one given by Dennis Lehane in The Given Day. It's been said that at the core of all fiction is the question, "Who am I?" This is indeed the question Moira Delmonico continually asks herself as she desperately tries to separate herself from her mother and her overwhelming legacy. It gives me a chance to introduce a new lead character as well as expand the Scott Carson saga into the early 20th century. I hope you give it a chance and leave a review.