Greenland Discovers Bad Bunny

 

(By Cyril Bubberpuss, Conservative-American) 

Say what you want about our president but one thing is undeniable- He is a man of strong principles and beliefs. During the Super Bowl halftime show yesterday, the president called me on my satellite phone to grouse. He kept calling Bad Bunny "a fake American," a phrase he got from his good friend, Jake Paul, who himself is a proud resident of Puerto Rico in a valiant ongoing attempt to keep the liberal Democrats from stealing his money through taxes.

     Try as I had to remind the president that Puerto Rico is a US territory, thereby making Bad Bunny an American, the president wouldn't hear it. "That's your opinion, Cyril," he said before making some off-color remarks about his female dancers.

     We may be in Greenland, a vast island of 57,000 Eskimos, but that doesn't mean we can't still cling to our American roots. So we huddled together in what passes for Nuuk's only sports bar, where wages are made every day on dog sled races. So, while we watched the New England Patriots act like the practice squad for the Seattle Seahawks, I girded myself for the halftime show that we in MAGA World have dreaded for months.

 

     Finally, the ordeal began, which Cecil seemed to welcome after 90 minutes of griping about why the NFL cheerleaders couldn't be junior high-aged boys. It was the longest 13 minutes of my life and felt like 15. I couldn't understand a word he said. When Ricky Martin took the stage, I thought he'd offer some much-needed translation but, alas, we were disappointed. 

 

    My baby girl, Bertha, seemed pleased with the show as she frequently said, "Yeah, baby, shake that moneymaker", even though I realized she was looking at Bad Bunny's female dancers about whom the president was making off-color remarks ("Look at that little one. That's the kind Jeffrey used to go for.").

 

     But I always distrusted Bad Bunny and that stage name that reminds me of Donnie Darko. It used to give Cecil nightmares when he was a teenager growing up and he's always had a fear of rabbits ever since.

     But Mr. Bunny did get 135,000,000 viewers to watch him, numbers even the ratings-obsessed Mr. Trump can't disparage, no doubt mostly from those who tuned in out of some morbid fascination over someone who speaks a language that isn't American. But, being the good American that I am, I dutifully logged on to X to watch the patriotic alternative: Turning Point USA's Halftime show headlined by Kid Rock.

     Unfortunately, that Hall of Fame of Hasbeens couldn't be shown on X on account of licensing issues. Not to be deterred, I went to Youtube, where a whopping 5,000,000 tuned in to watch the exciting spectacle of Bob Richie tell people to dust off their Bibles. I'm telling you, people, that's as exciting as it gets.

    While I was on the phone with the president, I heard partygoers at Mar a Lago  and I heard Bad Bunny's show playing in the background. I wondered why the president wasn't tuning to the real halftime show. The president offered a succinct answer:

      "What about Bob?"

"It's All With Little Kids."

Trump's Justice Department is in possession of thousands of videos of children being graped by wealthy and powerful men.

Those men WERE being blackmailed by Epstein. But by not releasing their names, these men must now be loyal to Trump to protect their identities.

Trump is… pic.twitter.com/Xvy6tiRbOJ

— Jake Broe (@RealJakeBroe) February 7, 2026

     Over the years, I've written scathing posts about Jimmy O'Keefe. You might remember that O'Keefe is a right wing operative famous for his misleading, deceptive videos. Pretending as if he was dressed in a pimp costume with co-conspirator Hannah Giles, they'd filmed an ACORN employee giving them advice on how to avoid paying taxes. ACORN had smelled a rat and punked them.

     The right wing outrage was fierce. Congress suspended funding for ACORN. Bobby Jindal also suspended funding for ACORN despite Louisiana providing no funding for it. Right wingers hated ACORN because they helped register the "wrong" people to vote, i.e. Democratic voters. O'Keefe, and Brietbart, used deceptively-edited videos to give the right wing just the proper amount of ginned up outrage to defund ACORN.

     Then O'Keefe went to prison for trying to bug then Senator Mary Landrieu's senate office. I had a lot of fun with that back then. Then he got kicked out of the Project Veritas that he'd founded. I had fun with that, too.

     But one is perplexed as to how to approach this.

     O'Keefe is still using guerilla journalism, surreptitiously filming people in the hopes of getting them to make embarrassing admissions. Except this time, he's not targeting liberals, but people like Pam Bondi. That's Pam Bondi, as in the AG of the United States. Apparently, O'Keefe, in the greatest 180 since Scrooge and the Grinch, has somehow found his inner journalist and is trolling the administration as regards the Epstein Files.

     In other words, Jimmy O'Keefe has successfully transformed himself from a useless idiot to a useful idiot.

     First, some context: Last year, O'Keefe sent an operative to interview Pam Bondi, except Bondi didn't know she was being interviewed. They met at a restaurant on April 28, 2025 an Bondi told her some of what she knew about the Epstein files, which was at stark odds with what she was telling the American people.

     At one point, Bondi made the startling admission that there were tens of thousands of videos of little kids being abused by Epstein and other powerful men. Now, who knows what Bondi was thinking in making such an admission to anyone, let alone a random stranger in a restaurant. And I'm still stupefied as to why this didn't make a bigger wave than it had when O'Keefe released it last year.

     But the video is getting a second set of legs in the wake of an accusation by an Air Force veteran named Jake Broe who'd alleged that Trump is using those same Epstein files to blackmail the people in those videos, which is perfectly in keeping with Trump's mobster mentality.

     That's right. The guy who's mentioned in the Epstein files far more than anyone else (over 38,000 times just in the new batch and counting) is using them to blackmail other men. And Trump can do that because his personal law firm formerly known as the DOJ has complete control of those files, millions of which the DOJ had said they would never release (in violation of federal law).

      So, in case you're still wondering how Trump got rich scumbags to pony up at least $400,000,000 for his bloated ballroom, wonder no more.

Accept No Substitutes

    There's something beyond brazen about a serial crook like Donald Trump saying that the only election results he'll accept are the ones he'll be allowed to steal. He said as much in 2024 just before the election that, yes, he stole with a certain South African Nazi's help.

    And Republicans all over the country at every level are shitting their pants at the certainty of voter backlash on Election Day this year. In keeping with the fascist bunker mindset, they're not recalibrating their message and trying to be more appealing to those voters. Instead, they're resorting to gerrymandering, voter suppression and the usual dirty Republican tricks. Their policies suck and swallow with gusto and they know it. Selling rank and file voters on their policies would be like trying to sell ICE merchandise in Minneapolis. 

    The first and biggest salvo against the will and voice of the people was when Trump essentially ransacked Fulton County, Georgia of its 2020 election records, including sensitive and highly personal voter data. To justify this, Trump is still pissing and moaning about a redneck state having the temerity to go for Biden that year.

    But even the guy who made dementia cool again must know that no matter what, the 2020 election's long over. It's not like he can jump into a time machine and make himself the president from 2021-2025. It's not as if he's going to get back pay. In short, he can't change history no matter how many times he posts on Truth Social.

 

(Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters)

     It would be a mistake to think that Trump is actually relitigating his grievances from 2020. He's simply recycling those grievances as a pretext for going after Fulton County, where he was arrested and booked in 2024 before being hit with charges by the office of a Black woman. Fulton County is just a dress rehearsal for what he's planning on doing to other states and counties.

     Otherwise, if it really is all about 2020, then why order DNI Tulsi Gabbard to lurk in the warehouse and supervise the raid (which was a real good look for her, by the way. It makes her look like Mrs. Kravitz spying on Samantha Stevens.)? Why personally call FBI agents during the raid to rah rah them and congratulate them? Why have a Cabinet-level intelligence official supervising the whole thing?

     And why did Pam Bondi send a letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz stating that if he just turns over the voter data from 2020, they'd see less heat from ICE? Nice state you got here. Be a shame if...

     Now he's talking about a partial GOP nationalization of this year's elections, 15 states to be more precise (although he hasn't specified which states need Uncle Sam's avuncular "help" but odds are all or at least most of them have Democratic governors).

     Republicans, of course, seeing their incumbencies jeopardized, are only too willing do so his bidding. The four Republican scumbags sent to Capitol Hill from Minnesota recently proposed legislation that would halt election funds to their own state if they didn't cave in to Trump's ransom demands to turn over electoral data.

     Trump's also going after absentee ballots... again. This would essentially end all voting in Washington State since historically, they use nothing but mail-in ballots. It would also halt elections in Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, and Utah. Which I wouldn't expect a fucking idiot like Trump to know or care about. Steve Bannon's also predicting that ICE will "surround the polls" on election day.

     And then, there's this bizarre 50 state conference call between election officials and the DOJ that will be held at the end of the month.

     Republicans are right to soil their pants. Five days ago, Taylor Rehmet flipped a Texas state Senate seat in SD-9 (Fort Worth) that had been reliably red as far back as anyone could remember. But it wasn't just that Rehmet merely overperformed by losing with grace or eking out a win. He destroyed his Republican opponent, Leigh Wambsganss. (Immediately losing interest in Wambsganss, Trump said, "I’m not involved in that. That’s a local Texas race." despite having endorsed him in the 11th hour.)

     Overperformance? Far from it. Rehmet beat Wambsganss by 14 points (despite being outspent by nearly 6-1)  in a district that Trump carried in '24 by 17 points. This represents a 31 point shift in a solidly conservative SD. Even more alarmingly, it represented a whopping 50 percent shift in the Latino vote in that district. Suddenly, deporting their own kind was no longer a viable way to own the libs.

     It's always risky to look at any one election result as a bellwether, especially one that's a local race and not even state-wide. But those numbers in SD-9 can't be interpreted as anything less than a wake-up call to complacent Republicans. And Rehmet's win this week is just another Democratic win to add to the growing pile of Democrats winning local and state-wide races that saw Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger get sent to the governor's mansions in New Jersey and Virginia, respectively.

     So is it any wonder why Trump and his fascist goons are raiding warehouses and arresting anyone with skin color as brown as a paper bag? Trump said early this year that if Republicans don't reclaim the House and Senate that, "I'll get impeached", which is perhaps the only honest thing he's ever said in this term. 

     He said the quiet part out loud. He doesn't give a shit if the Republicans win or not. He's panicking that if the Democrats take over both chambers of Congress, there's a chance he'll get impeached for a third time and thrown out of office (although a conviction would require 60 votes in the Senate). Trump essentially told those Republicans, "Win, you losers, and save me!"

     But keep in mind that last December, with the passage of the Epstein discharge petition that had barely gotten 218 votes, all but one Republican (Clay Higgins) voted in the roll call vote to release the Epstein files. When the Democrats take the House and the fat man falls, you'll be amazed how many Republicans will tap dance on his political grave.

You Take Greenland, I'll Take Staten Isle

 (By Cyril Blubberpuss, Conservative-American)

Doing movie reviews is not my forte. After all, I've only essayed one in my long history with this liberal sewer of a blog. But every once in a great while, a shockingly brilliant movie will come down the pike (I'm thinking of 2000 Mules and Hillbilly Elegy) that will just scream to be reviewed by everybody. So what made me put on my Rex Reed cap?

    Melania: the Movie, of course, the film that dares ask, "What will Eurotrash put up with for a life of glamor and ridicule?"

    We just had the film's premiere here in Nuuk, the bustling metropolis and capital of Greenland (soon to be renamed Trumpville or DonaldBurg). We'd had a special tent set up by some of the locals that served as a makeshift movie theater, which actually had a concession stand that sold whale blubber and lutefisk, which is actually almost edible if you bang your head on a hard surface and sever the olfactory nerve.

    Anyway, once the film began, it was obvious the last few stragglers would have almost filled the back row of wooden chairs that were set up. My Danish counterpart, the Three Card Monte dealer from Aarhus, provided a steady stream of ribald jokes in some sort of Scandinavian version of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

    Despite my counterpart's uncharitable retitling of the movie (Gold Digger: The Girl With the Pyrite Touch), this comeback movie by sexual adventurer Brett Ratner more than deserves a fair hearing at least before it will get savaged by the liberal eggheads over at Rotten Tomatoes.

     And, in his defense, it was difficult for Mr. Ratner to film the First Lady exiting a tower or mansion, into a waiting limousine and onto a private plane over and over and over without it looking repetitive yet somehow he succeeded in doing so 37 times.

    Just based on her ability to shun those not in the 1% and running away from them over the film's hour and 48 minutes I think qualifies it as an action movie. Think of it as Rush Hour only with First Lady Melania Trump being the only one on the highway and getting nothing but green lights. Honestly, the First Lady's ceaseless efforts to avoid that rabble led me to conclude that the $27,000,000 she pocketed wasn't nearly enough.

     

    In fact, here's a production still that, incredibly, didn't make it in the actual movie. It was a deleted scene that, hopefully, will be in the Special Features section of the DVD (that will be out by tomorrow) in which Melania catches sight of some of those bottom-feeding well-wishers who actually got within a quarter mile of her and at 30,000 feet, too!

     

     Of course, everyone's a critic and my kid brother Cecil began grousing midway through the movie about the near total lack of scenes with a preteen Barron Trump (although one hilarious scene showed Barron with his father and the future president asking him what his name was, which made the kid cry).

      

    My baby girl, Bertha, wasn't very enchanted, either, and hoped that the First Lady would have at least one scene dressed in a flannel checkered shirt and snow pants, the preferred costume for Lady Ice Road Truckers of Alaska.

    Still, the trick to being pleased by a movie made by professionals and executives currying favor with a disturbingly generous administration is to walk in without any preconceived notions or high expectations and Melania: A New Movie certainly didn't disappoint. In fact, the final scene brought tears to my eyes.

     In a brilliant nod to Home Alone II, there was an unscripted moment in which Melania is walking into Trump Tower wearing a black leather trench coat embossed with the words, "I Still Don't Give Flying Fuck. Do You?" A little Puerto Rican boy asks her for directions and Melania then points the unwitting little wetback into a pack of waiting ICE agents. The tears were those of laughter, let me assure you.

 

      By the way, I don't know who the comedian is, but some Greenlandic wag pinned this to the outside of the tent and believe you me, the president will find out who did it and will send ICE to Greenland as soon as he can figure out where to deport them to.

A Case for First Degree Murder

 

     My old buddy and fellow Bay Stater Charlie Pierce at Esquire posted a bombshell of an article yesterday making the case that the (literal) brownshirts of ICE had murdered Alex Pretti last Saturday with malice aforethought and premeditation. In other words, first degree murder. 

     New footage came to light showing an altercation between Pretti and ICE on January 13th. They'd broken one of his ribs after Pretti kicked off the tail light of one of the departing ICE vehicles, making the goons inside to pile out of the car and assault Pretti.

     That was the moment the VA ICU nurse got on ICE's radar.

     Then this came out via CNN:

     Federal immigration officers have been collecting personal information about protesters and agitators in Minneapolis, sources told CNN—and had documented details about Alex Pretti before he was shot to death on Saturday. It is unclear how Pretti first came to the attention of federal authorities, but sources told CNN that about a week before his death, he suffered a broken rib when a group of federal officers tackled him while he was protesting their attempt to detain other individuals. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that “DHS law enforcement has no record of this incident.” 

     Of course they don't. That would be too incriminating.

     However, it doesn't square with an infamously vindictive entity that seems to know where every dark-skinned person is at all times even when they're out getting medication or picking their kids up from school. And, again, the fascist douchebags at Homeland Security are compiling granular information on anyone who even looks at them cross-eyed.

    They may be brain-dead thugs on the streets but their intel-gathering skills border on the supernatural (Palantir, anyone?). So we're supposed to believe that DHS never became apprised of the assault on Pretti on January 13th?

     The day Pretti was murdered on the 24th, ICE claimed among their welter of lies that there was a riot going on. In reality, as the videos show, there weren't enough protesters to pack a phone booth and they certainly weren't rioting. But the ICE goons saw Pretti across the street, recognized him then walked across the street to engage him.

     I'll say that again: They. Engaged. Him. 

     The rest is history. Pretti came to the aid of a woman that ICE had thrown to the ground and that's when they swarmed him. One disarms him after he was down then seconds later at least two ICE "agents" pumped 10 bullets into him.

     I'm no lawyer, but I think a Minnesota prosecutor could make a pretty solid case for first degree murder.

     The trick, of course, unless this prosecutor would try them in absentia, is finding these scurrilous cowards. DHS has confirmed they're on paid administrative leave after they hustled them out of the state, as they had with Jonathan Ross after he murdered Renee Good. 

     Murder an unarmed American citizen, get a paid vacation.

     What a country. 

Melania: A New Bomb

      Here's a tip for any undocumented migrants hiding from ICE- Buy a ticket for Melania. No one will get near you.

From Would-Be Assassin to Victim of Circumstance

     This entire debacle involving Alex Pretti would be laughable if it didn't involve an innocent man in a morgue.

     Once this administration realized to their shock and awe just how deeply unpopular murdering unarmed Americans in the streets turned out to be, this wrecked clown car has been spinning its wheels and digging itself into an even deeper rut.

     Literally within minutes of Alex Pretti losing his life in Minneapolis to two murderous ICE agents, Kristi Noem did what Kristi Noem does and automatically smeared Alex Pretti's corpse. Greg Bovino claimed Pretti was there to inflict maximum damage upon ICE agents. Then Miller piled on, calling Pretti "a would-be assassin". JD Vance piled on.

     But the questions, the criticism didn't stop. The Pretti and Good murders of this month have actually overtaken the Epstein files in terms of political fallout. A few right wing pundits and a handful of Republican lawmakers have called for investigations while Democrats have demanded hearings, investigations and for Noem to be either impeached or fired.

     Trump started the Pretti pile-on by posting a picture of Pretti's gun, which was taken off him just a few seconds before he was shot 10 times and killed. One agent, seconds after Pretti was murdered, actually clapped his hands as he walked away. Then something strange happened: TACO softened his tone. Suddenly, it was a tragedy, especially after he found out Pretti's parents were fans of his (i.e. losing two voters to which he's no longer entitled).

     Karoline Leavitt refused to amplify Vance's and Miller's claims, saying she was waiting for an investigation. Trump called Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey and started singing Walz's praises. Greg Bovino was kicked out of Minnesota and replaced with Tom Homan, which is hardly an upgrade. The last time anyone saw Bovino, he was stumbling down the Yellow Brick Road on the way to El Centro.

     But don't be fooled by this so-called contrition. This administration only cares about poll numbers and Trump's numbers have taken a hit since Good's and Pretti's murders. We still don't know the identities of the vicious thugs who'd murdered Pretti in cold blood. They and the goons who were with them immediately fled Minnesota like the cowards they are, the administration hiding their identities and protecting them.

     After, again, freezing out Minnesota law enforcement, the FBI and ICE immediately began an "investigation" that was not really an investigation but a review of possible violations of force policies. The idea was to circle the wagons with maximum opacity and not investigate for murder or civil rights violations, which potentially carry the death penalty.

     And replacing Bovino with Homan, when he isn't accepting bribes in fast food takeout bags, is like polishing the brass fittings on the Hindenburg. After singing paeans to Tim Walz, the day after his phone call to Mayor Frey, Trump immediately began raging at the mayor and threatening him.

    This is not contrition, folks. This isn't contrition. This is just a homicidal junta that's barely smart enough to parse the numbers and realize they're not good. They want to keep violating peoples' civil rights, they want to keep murdering ICE's opponents but, darn it, they just can't think of a way to do all that in a way that'll fly with the American people.

    The overall mission hasn't changed. The fascistic devotion to it hasn't dimmed by one watt. There are still thousands of ICE agents in Minnesota and Trump is already balefully casting his jaundiced eyes for the next Democratic-run state and city to victimize.

     The thing that amazes me is the anemic pushback from these Second Amendment types. Disarming a legal gun owner then murdering him in cold blood is, one would think, a 2A advocate's worst nightmare. That was all we heard from them when Obama was president, even though Obama never once even hinted he would disarm Americans of their guns.

     And Idiot America still hasn't realized the rank hypocrisy of Trump and Congressional Republicans calling J6 rioters patriots and political prisoners, with Trump pardoning over 1500 of them his first day back in office. They back the blue, alright, as long as they don't come after them or oppose them. 

This Used to Be Such a Peaceful Town

 

     Stella: "Some people think because they're stronger, or meaner, that they can push you around. I've seen a lot of that. But it's only true if you let it be. The world is what you make of it."

     Paden: "I like your attitude. But it can be risky." 

     I keep thinking of that snatch of dialogue from the 1985 movie, Silverado. It's a brilliant piece of binary dialogue. Neither Stella's nor Paden's lines would've been very memorable by themselves but together, they give each other power, resonance. Relevance.

     We're seeing that defiant spirit in Minneapolis these days. The risk of standing up to power had cost two 37 year-old Minnesotans their lives. And, still, they refuse to stand down. If you're a dittohead MAGAt who's incapable of thinking for yourself beyond Trump's Truth Social feed, then they're domestic terrorists. However, if you live in the reality-based community, they're heroic patriots.

     When Joe Biden took over the presidency in 2021, he'd inherited a dying war in Afghanistan in which we had just 2500 troops. That's 500 fewer than the number of federal agents in Minnesota these days. It's not quite a standing army, which would have horrified the Founding Fathers who were distrustful of such things, but it does count as an occupation and an invasion.

      The reasons for ICE being in Minneapolis-St. Paul were farcical from the beginning. Because of one low octane right wing vlogger alleging day care fraud carried out by Somalis, Donald Trump, acting purely out of an animus against Rep. Ilhan Omar and Governor Tim Walz, dispatched 2000 ICE and Border Patrol agents. Since Renee Good's murder at the hands of Jonathan Ross, he's added 1000. The Minneapolis Police Department, by contrast, numbers just 600.

     The completely worthless mainstream media still haven't asked the obvious question of why an immigration enforcement body like ICE is even postured to act as if they're investigating day care fraud. If it's federal funds we're talking about, you'd send in the FBI, bring in forensic accountants. Or let Minnesota's law enforcement spearhead the investigation.

     You wouldn't send in thousands of masked shock troops carrying fully automatic machine guns and chemical weapons.

     And you wouldn't use them to murder unarmed civilians. (Yes, Pretti was disarmed just seconds before an ICE agent filled him with 10 bullets).

     One of the many ironies during this illegal occupation is that, according to the Ohio Immigrant Alliance and the Pacific Antifascist Collective, a report they issued just hours ago discovered that 30 or more ICE and Border Patrol agents both past and present have been accused of or prosecuted on a vast raft of charges. They consist of gunpoint sexual assault, child sex trafficking, aggravated assault, robbery, rape, torture, kidnapping, sexual abuse of a minor, and possession, and production of child sexual abuse materials.

     And those are just the ones who have been caught.

     We know for a fact that many of the ICE agents in Minnesota right now are neo Nazi skinheads, people awaiting trial on drug charges and, likelier than not, some January 6 rioters. When ICE and DHS last year put out the cattle call for recruits to help the government purge the nation of brown people, these brain-dead goons saw it as a chance to float up to the mother ship. The $50,000 signing bonus and illusion of complete impunity didn't make it any less attractive.

    And the reality that all too many of us refuse to confront is that our government is actively killing us. Then they smear the dead, lie about their crimes and sneer at their critics. Criminals with homicidal intent, arrogance and institutionalized impunity from an equally criminal junta posing as an actual functional government never promises a good outcome. We saw it in Germany in the heyday of the SA.

     When Trump vowed to be a dictator on day one, 77,000,000 didn't believe him or didn't care or thought that their votes would somehow immunize them from his thrashing around to injure his self-perceived enemies. And now we have a lame duck "president" in the twilight of life and relevance and power who's being reminded daily that he can no longer alter reality to suit his agenda.

     That, too, is not a good combination. And don't be fooled by Trump walking back his prior statements on Minnesota and distancing himself from DHS. Don't be fooled by Trump bemoaning the shooting death of another Minnesota resident. Don't be fooled by his suddenly singing Tim Walz's praises after a phone call. Don't be fooled by his criticisms of ICE. He doesn't care about Renee Good or Alex Pretti any more than he cares about anyone not named Donald Trump. That guy only looks at events in his orbit through the lenses of poll numbers and ratings. This makes him look bad. And he can't have that.

     So, for the second time in five and a half years, Minneapolis looks like a war zone, with tear gas replacing what used to be the pristine air of Minnesota, with barricades made of dumpsters blocking city streets, a populace enraged over the violation of their sovereignty and civil rights, their very right to life.

    Or, as Brian Dennehy's character Cobb bemoaned in Silverado, "This used to be such a peaceful town."

Not a Pretti Sight

      In 1984, George Orwell once famously wrote, "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."

      Every minute of every day since January 20th last year, we the people have been afflicted by a shamelessly criminal, murderous regime that regards Orwell's novel not as a warning but a guidebook. With the exception of Stephen Miller, a guy who went into public disservice because his puny forearms weren't strong enough to strangle prostitutes, the most Orwellian figure in this criminal junta has been Greg Bovino (R-Munchkinland).

     In an interview with CNN's Dana Bash, Bovino essentially called Americans idiots for not swallowing wholesale his vividly palpable lies about the execution of Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis yesterday. Bash had shown video proof of Bovino's goons disarming Pretti seconds before shooting him. Bovino yelled that CNN didn't have the right to "litigate" a still frame, apparently unable to distinguish a still frame from a video.

     In a video showing the run-up to the murder, Pretti can be seen coming to the aid of a woman who'd been shoved to the ground by ICE thugs. ICE then swarms Pretti and knocks him to the ground. They then disarm him and, once he was on the ground and no longer posed a threat, a coward, or several, shot him 10 times in five seconds. 

     Now, several things ought to be made clear- Pretti was a legal gun owner who had a concealed carry permit, which is legal in the state of Minnesota. The asshole who'd shot him did so in a crowd of his own people, which was why they scattered like roaches when you turn the lights on. At no time did Pretti reach for his gun.

     To hear Bovino and others talk, Pretti was there to "massacre" ICE agents in a crime scene (without specifying or proving what the crime was). But if that was Pretti's agenda, he would've started blasting away at any prick wearing a mask.

     What Bovino is essentially saying is, if you legally have a gun strapped to your hip within sight of an ICE agent, they have the right to shoot you dead. This is part and parcel to the paranoid, murderous regime of Nazi Germany.

     The really amazing part was Bovino's assertion that the ICE agents were the real victims in all this and not the guy lying in the Hennipin County morgue with 10 gunshot wounds in his corpse. In other words, he's playing the Blame the Victim game and reversing the victimhood so it goes to the actual criminals.

     Even though little Greg doesn't like to litigate still pictures, I'd like to show him the lead image and ask him what he makes of it. I'll tell you what I see: Pretti being forced to he ground, his left hand outstretched to break his fall, what's plainly a cell phone in his right. And, right above him, an ICE goon pointing a gun right at his head in a one-handed grip.

     You ask any cop or former cop and they'll tell you there isn't a single thing about that still frame that's correct in law enforcement, including the grip on the gun.

     And yet, these Nazi stooges of Trump are going on TV and essentially telling us we can't believe our lying eyes, that we should believe their cognitive dissonance and not pictures or videos that put the lie to their claims. And Bovino is telling us if we have a gun, whether we legally have them or not, and get anywhere within spitting distance of an ICE raid, expect to get shot and killed.

     This is a fascist junta masquerading as an actual presidential administration that's grown alarmingly comfortable with lying about each and every thing under the sun. And Goddamn the Republican scum in Congress and all these 2A gun nuts on social media for remaining silent during this killing spree.

     And if the Democrats were worth a shit, they'd put that lead picture in every one of their campaign ads this year until Americans get the message. 

"Minnesota Has Had It."

BREAKING: Reports of ICE-involved shooting near Glam Doll Donuts in Minneapolis, Minnesota pic.twitter.com/fAqaAH3JyW

— Rapid Report (@RapidReport2025) January 24, 2026

     Alex Jeffrey Pretti has only been dead for a few hours and his murder already has its own Wikipedia page.  Pretti was an ICU nurse who worked at the local VA hospital. Pretti's murder this morning at 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis is already the third shooting involving ICE in 17 days.

      Two have been fatal and both victims had been US citizens and Minneapolis residents.

 

      Pee Wee German, aka Stephen Miller, couldn't wait to chime in and called Pretti a "domestic terrorist", the catch-all phrase beloved of domestic terrorists to describe people who stand up to domestic terrorism.  The usual lies have started. DHS is now claiming, without evidence, of course, that Pretti had his gun in his hand and threatened agents. The problem with that is the New York Times thoroughly reviewed the video and found that he was holding a cell phone.

     If you look at the video posted above that was taken by a bystander from inside Glam Doll Donuts across the street, Pretti was swarmed by at least seven ICE agents and he was shot 10 times in five seconds by one of them while he was down and surrounded by ICE.

     I hardly see how that's consistent with law enforcement training anywhere outside of ICE's murder mill. And when real law enforcement, the Minneapolis Police, arrived on the scene, DHS tried to block access to the scene and was successfully resisted by Chief Brian O'Hara.

     Gov. Tim Walz has called out the National Guard and Trump is renewing his threats to invoke the Insurrection Act. 

     That's all I have right now. Anything else would be speculative. But rest assured I'll be writing about this in the immediate future.

The Ultimate Mission Creep

     Yesterday, a whistleblower released a memo that's been circulating around DHS and ICE since at least May 12 last year that essentially allows ICE to enter peoples' homes without judicial warrants and to do so on "administrative warrants". The butter-fingered corporate MSM that can always be counted on to drop the ball consistently hasten to add that administrative warrants are not unheard of in immigration operations but that's not what they should be concentrating on.

     What this blatantly illegal memo shows is that DHS, following the guidance of the most blatantly and brazenly lawless administration in history, had made a quiet but unmistakable pivot away from the judiciary. Judicial warrants are, of course, signed off by judges and magistrates. And while, yes, administrative warrants have been used relatively sparingly in the past, this memo masquerading as actual case law seems to wave away most of the guidelines of prior administrative orders.

     This essentially takes power away from immigration judges and magistrates and puts it in the hands of politically-appointed bureaucrats and apparatchiks. This signals not a mere loss of confidence in the judiciary but an open or barely-concealed contempt of it. The few guidelines are as follows: ICE officers cannot seek to gain entry into a house before 6 AM or after 10 PM. They need to give the occupants time to comply. And the officers must identify themselves and state their reason for the removal. That's according to the guidelines of the mysterious I-205 form that has somehow supplanted an actual judicial warrant.

     In fact, the memo states in part,

     "Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose.”

     Buried in that anodyne language is a blithe dismissal of the US Constitution, specifically the 4th Amendment in the Bill of Rights which prohibits the government from illegal search and seizure. In fact, the 4th Amendment reads in full,

     "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

     It's the "probable cause" that's the sticking point. The 4th amendment is sneered at by authoritarian right wingers when they move to invade peoples' homes and offices, especially when they happen to be enemies of Donald Trump. But when they themselves are the targets of such procedures, then you'll note how quickly they cling to the 4th amendment.

     However, we saw none of that due process in evidence when two days ago, ChongLy "Scott" Thao, a US citizen, was pulled from his St. Paul home at gunpoint in frigid weather, wearing nothing but boxer shorts and his grandson's blanket over his shoulders. It was literally and figuratively a chilling spectacle. Thao said they broke through his door, screamed at the family, pointed guns at them and didn't even want to see documentation proving he was a citizen.

     He also said they didn't have a warrant, administrative or otherwise. 

     They released him hours later without, of course, an apology or explanation.

     It's unclear how this related to Somali day care fraud or why ICE is even "investigating" it to begin with. 

     I hardly think this was what the Founding Fathers meant when they referred to "probable cause".

     This is the very definition of mission creep and by that, I don't mean a purported investigation into fraud immediately morphing into wholesale arrests and detentions. I'm talking about the perversion and broadening of federal authority so that csrtoonishly vague "guidelines" in a memo have essentially supplanted judicial review and oversight so that bureaucrats with an agenda can take over the duties of trained jurists who have to obey stringent guidelines.

     We're not very far away from where Nazi Germany was in the 30s and 40s when they broke into peoples' homes and arrested them without legal resistance and restraint.

      And at least it can be said that when the Nazis detained people, they actually read their papers.

President Swiss Cheese Brain

 

     Every year, at forums and summits, Donald Trump is shamelessly inflicted on the rest of the world. It's like a rich family that occasionally lets its deformed child out of the attic and gives it a break from the steady diet of fish heads. "Oh, look, our beautiful little boy has come down from the attic to join us!", they say to the horrified guests who nervously laugh or stare or look away.

     Today, it was Switzerland's turn at the Davos summit.

    Davos is the place where the world's richest psychopaths meet to discuss how they're going to carve up the world like a birthday cake and make themselves money they plainly don't need. In other words, it's the perfect place for Trump, who's added $1.4 billion to his personal wealth since stealing the Oval Office for the second time.

     So, it only stands to reason, since dementia is a degenerative disease that doesn't get any better, that the deformed little boy would step down from the attic and embarrass the family, one that always manages to hide their mortification and convincingly emulate pride. 

   I don't reasonably expect anyone to listen to Trump's usual meandering hour and 11 minutes of drivel (I certainly didn't, since Trump's voice to me is actually more irritating than nails on a blackboard). But by now we can take it as an article of faith that very little of what Trump said at Davos today was factual. The one thing he did say that we can believe is truthful is when he said,

     "There are a couple of people in the room. I can't stand them...  I would screw them if I could, but I can't do it, right? I can't do it. I would have had a chance, or I could just take them and say, you can't do what Apple's doing, but you're not allowed to do that, Newt Gingrich, right? We can't do it."

     And the world-eating psychopaths in attendance nervously tittered because they all knew he meant every one of them and quietly muttered things related to the 25th amendment. Because they know Donald Trump is the ultimate misanthrope and that he's older than dirt, has had three dementia exams in the past year and will be pushing up daisies soon enough.

    But for now, they have to listen to him, his sagging, jiggling face the color of an old Oxford shoe, hoarsely droning on and on and on... 

     And, of course, he had to dribble some vitriol out of his foul maw at the UK, France, Germany and several other nations, including Ukraine and Russia (Yes, the stupidest man alive called them "stupid"). At the same time he was insulting virtually every nation on earth, the EU's international trade committee decided to halt negotiations of a deal between the US and the EU over his obsession with Greenland.

     And that doesn't even mention the EU's near-activation of its anti-coercion mechanism that's been called a "trade bazooka". That would essentially close off the US from the 450,000,000 customers that could theoretically purchase goods and services from US companies. And let's not forget that the end game of this scenario could involve the EU cashing in its US bonds. Let's also not forget, the European Union owns 40% of US bonds, a historically rock-solid market. If they cashed in all those US bonds, it would be catastrophic to the bond market.

    That comes out to about eight trillion dollars in bonds and equities. But tell that to a moron who'd bankrupted virtually every company and casino he's ever sullied with his grubby little fingers.

    Then there's Trump's shockingly corrupt Board of Peace (which never even mentions Gaza). This would consist of member nations that would pay a one billion dollar bribe for membership. And even though there would be a board, Trump fully plans on making himself the chairman, subject to a three year term but all final decisions would get to be made by him. Oh, and he could personally name his successor. Imagine a coked-up Donald Trump. Jr. demanding a billion dollars from a President Kamala Harris if she gets elected in 2028.

    As McGill University's professor of political theory, Jacob Levy, rightly said, this would make Trump "king of the world".

    Setting aside for a minute the beyond-risible spectacle of a guy who's bombed seven nations and carried out 622 plane or drone strikes in 2025 alone creating something called a "Peace Board", what the "Board of Peace" also fails to mention in its charter is where, exactly, that billion dollar per nation bribe would end up or how it would be used.

      But considering Trump's infallible instinct for enriching himself, an instinct that even dementia can't blunt, is it a stretch to speculate that all that money would wind up in his pockets?

The King We Should Be Honoring

     As America solemnly celebrated Martin Luther King Jr Day yesterday, there was a little news item that had hardly made a ripple but was perfectly symbolic of this unabashedly racist administration. Donald Trump couldn't cancel the holiday- that would've required an Act of Congress- so he took his petty racism and revenge out the only way he knew how.

     The Department of the Interior quietly announced it was removing free fee days at its national parks on MLK Day. As an additional fuck you to the civil rights movement, Trump also signed an executive order ending the free fee day on Juneteenth, the day when slaves were informed that slavery had ended and that they were free. Then, to put a rotten cherry on top of all that, Trump then replaced MLK's birthday with his own, June 14th.

     The fact that our "president" chose to target a holiday announcing emancipation and Dr. Martin Luther King's federal holiday shows how petty and racist he truly is and always has been. And then, to prove once again how morbidly bloated his ego is, he replaced King's birthday with his own.

     This is the same guy who, over a half a century ago, refused to rent to Black people. HUD had to get involved and force the Trumps to do so after finding out applications for Black applicants were marked with a "C" for "Colored" then weeded out and denied housing based on that.

     This is the same piece of shit who has gone after virtually every Black female member of Congress from Frederica Wilson to Maxine Waters to Jasmine Crockett to Ilhan Omar.

     Speaking as someone with two biracial sons, ergo someone who'd never had the slightest tolerance for racism, words can't describe the loathing I feel for Trump and his racism. I don't have the words and I'm a talented writer who can usually find the words I need to describe how I'm thinking and feeling. This is a "man", for want of a better word, who is single-handedly bending Dr. King's moral arc back toward injustice.

     The damnable thing is that he's succeeding and we're letting him. He's succeeded in making racism cool and fashionable again. If George Wallace ever got elected president in '68 or '72, I don't think we'd see even half the racist shit we're seeing now under Trump.

     The so-called Civil Rights Division of the DOJ under Harmeet Dhillon is now doing literally the exact opposite of what the division was originally intended to do. The names and legacies of Black contributors to American history were immediately and swiftly erased. Public schools receiving federal funding, which is all of them, face the risk of losing said funding if they have the temerity to teach children about the horrors of slavery and that the Civil War was fought over it.

     DEI immediately came under fire as soon as Trump sleazed his way back into the stolen Oval Office thanks to $290,000,000 funneled into his campaign coffers by another racist named Elon Musk. And, of course, Republicans are working overtime to keep Black voters from voting for their candidates of choice. Congressional districts are being redlined by Republican lawmakers, diluting their voting power so much the Republicans are all but assured of only their candidates winning.

     This is all at the behest of one man who'd promised us on the campaign trail in 2024 that he'd be a dictator on Day One. What many of us didn't realize was that he'd become a dictator on Day One, not that he'd be a dictator just on Day One. He's acting just like a king and now, with his move to grab Greenland, he's acting more like an emperor than a king.

     Trump plainly is not the King we should be honoring and those of us who are dialed in and seeing what's really going on are now worrying if there will be a United States to salvage when Trump finally goes away for good.

Greetings From Whiteland!

 

During one of my frequent satellite phone calls with President Trump, my old friend made a shockingly brilliant observation. 

     "Cyril, did you ever notice that Greenland is white and Iceland is green? That's why I'm signing an Executive Order renaming Greenland Whiteland. My base will love it. The polar bears will love it. If Denmark doesn't like it, fuck 'em. That's false advertising!"

     My mouth gaped open and shut several times and thought of Trump University but chose not to say anything. Otherwise, the president's plan to rename the world's largest island sounded somewhat sane if you looked at it from a tortured but friendly perspective. After all, he renamed the Kennedy Center after himself and the Gulf of America has taken the world by storm. 

     Of course, my job here as S.C.A.M., or Secretary of Coercive Acquisition of Minerals, is my remit and I'm happy to help the president suck every last molecule of rare earth minerals from this beautiful land and to hell with what the liberal pinheads of the EU say!

      

     Of course, a nice surprise was when my baby girl, Bertha, showed up on a cargo plane here at Nuuk. Needless to say, the men on the airstrip were somewhat taken aback when Bertha began taking the cargo off the plane without the aid of a forklift. Bertha said she decided to join me and her uncle Cecil here because she heard a rumor on a women's weightlifting dating site that AMC, acting on the president's rather obsessive initiatives, may greenlight a delayed second season of Lady Ice Road Truckers of Alaska, only set in Greenland.

     Of course, there aren't any Peterbilt or Mack trucks here hauling freight, much less by lady ice road truckers, but my baby girl has always been an optimistic sort. So Bertha has been poking around Nuuk, looking for other female enthusiasts of the show, even though she's been frustrated in distinguishing the men from the women since everyone here looks like the Michelin Man.

 

    Meanwhile, Cecil has been busy learning Danish and teaching himself choice phrases learned by every tourist, such as, "Do you have a boyfriend, son?" and "Don't tell your parents."

     The main stumbling block to doing my job is the Danish government's inability to find a counterpart for me to work with. The closest thing they could find was a Three Card Monte dealer from Arhus they had to spring from prison. His name is Lars and I've already lost $500 to him.

     Still, even though the challenge of extracting the minerals from this unforgiving climate is daunting, our father Ambrose would be so proud of me. I remember after his glorious quarter term in Congress, Dad had bought a controlling interest in a uranium mine in Alaska in 1961. Back then, our nuclear arsenal was powered by uranium and America was desperate to find fresh sources of it.

    Things were going swimmingly until the Eskimo miners started glowing green in the dark. There were the usual liberal lawsuits and Dad's consortium had to settle out of court so that was the end of his foray into uranium mining. 

     So, while the work is challenging, at least my whole family is here and we're already personalizing the Ambassador's residence/weather shack. Bertha's already been putting up posters of Melissa Etheridge and kd lang and Cecil has been putting up posters of Hanson (before most of them were of the age of consent).

     And, to show his support for my remit, President Trump has already sent me a golden shovel to use for the inevitable ground-breaking ceremony. The problem is, at this time of year, the ground here in Greenland is like an iron plate so I may have to get Bertha involved. Or maybe the military troops that are streaming here in increasing numbers from all over Europe can pitch in.

Meet the New Ambassador to Greenland

 

Well, technically, I'm not the ambassador to Greenland because we still don't have one. However, we have a special envoy: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, a man most famous for his petroleum-based chicken gumbo recipe and banning same sex marriage among crawfish. However, President Trump has seen fit to make my most fervent dream come true: a job in his fabled administration (And, let's face it, everything that's come out of the White House this past year has been a fable or another).

    So imagine the look on my face when I got a phone call from President Trump yesterday in my Manhattan office announcing he was creating a new position just for yours truly.

      "Cyril, I've created a new office just for you: Secretary of Coercive Annexation of Minerals."

     After telling the president that spelled out S.C.A.M., he said, "I know it does. That's why I love it so much. Lutnick thought of it but I'm grabbing credit for it."

     So I'm writing this beside a lantern that burns whale blubber in the capital of Nuuk, which just makes President Trump love this place even more because it reminds him of the word "nuke". Not far away is my baby brother, Cecil, who's mumbling Justin Bieber lyrics and tossing and turning on a cot here in the Ambassador's residence (at least that's what the locals call it while seeming to laugh up their fur-lined sleeves), which used to serve as a weather observation shack.

 

    Occasionally, poor Cecil murmurs, "Oh, Justin, why did you have to get married?" before falling back asleep. Poor boy. It's been an adjustment for him.

     So, the president outlined for me what I needed to do as S.C.A.M., namely getting Greenland to let us have their minerals. So I said this to the Eskimos, who kept telling they aren't Eskimos, even though I know better. They insisted the extraction of the minerals was extremely difficult if not outright impossible because of the permafrost of the terrain, otherwise it would've been done already.

     They also said building the infrastructure would cost billions. Perhaps I spoke out of turn when I said we could afford that because when I conveyed this to the president via satellite phone (the only way to reach America from here aside from nuclear-powered homing pigeons), the president erupted over the phone.

     "Cyril," he said, "no one knows infrastructure better than me. After all, I used to talk about it all the time whenever a scandal was brewing. And, with the help of Polish laborers, I built Trump Tower for just under $1000."

     "Mr. President," I said, "I think building mineral extraction infrastructure is different than adding a few stories onto an existing tower."

     The conversation kind of went downhill from that point on, with the president calling my brother a boy diddler who cavorted with Jeffrey Epstein at Mar a Lago.

    As for our special envoy, he hasn't been to Greenland, yet, even though the governor plans on attending a dog sled race sometime in March, which Gov. Landry insists will automatically make him an expert in all matters Greenlandic. No doubt, he will make a great addition to our team.

     By way of ensuring success for our mission, the president had sent his namesake, Donald Trump, Jr., to Greenland to hand out plastic tubes of his branded styling gel ("A Little Don Will Do You") that the natives use to grease the bottoms of their sleds, which seems to work quite well.

     All things considered, we're making the transition to Greenlandic life quite well, even though a horny walrus keeps sneaking into the Ambassador's mansion/weather observation shack and pinning Cecil and me under its bulk.