EVENTS KEEP ROLLING

There are 301 days to the mid-term elections. I was more right than I knew when I came up with the title for this post last night.

This morning is what I get for sleeping in because I was expecting nothing beyond more blather and bullshit. At the moment, I can safely say nobody knows anything about the Venezuela strike and the capture of Nicolas Maduro. I can safely predict nothing good will come of this. According to Reuters: “Despite a dramatic overnight operation that knocked out electricity in part of Caracas and captured Maduro in or near one of his safe houses, U.S. forces have no control over the country itself, and Maduro’s government appears to still be in charge.

Trump’s comments about an open-ended presence in Venezuela echoed past leadership changes in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which ended in U.S. withdrawals after years of occupation. He said he was open to the idea of sending U.S. forces into Venezuela.” Once the Venezuelan people see that Trump cares nothing about creating a democracy there and Trump is only interested in stealing their oil, I can sdafely predict that “shit will happen.” Given our history over the past 60 years of dealing with shit that happens, Trump has stepped in the Big Muddy up to his neck by trying to wag this particular dog.

Now onto everything else:

Wagging the Dog will not help: An Economist/YouGov poll released on December 30 shows 80% of Americans believe that “political institutions have been captured by the rich and powerful;” 82% believe that “elites are out of touch with the realities of everyday life;” and 74% believe that “leaders who come from ordinary backgrounds better represent people like me.” On December 31, Republican polling firm Cygnal reported that in generic polling, 49% of Independents favored Democrats and only 29% opted for Republicans. Talentless little dweebs like David Ellison, who manages a company about as well as he performed in “Flyboys,” who think Daddy willed them title to the world, are going to find out differently in 2026.

MAGA’s favorite “journalist” turns out to be as fake as the rest of them: Nick Shirley, 23, is currently being praised and amplified by the MAGA right, including FBI Director Kash Patel and billionaire Elon Musk, for a video purporting to reveal “Minnesota’s Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal.” While the YouTuber with no journalism background and only a high school-level education claims to “bring the truth to all” of his 1.35 million subscribers, he has previously been shown to be staging his content. Last year, in a video titled “I Took Migrants to Visit Joe Biden,” Shirley rounded up people in Washington, D.C., loaded them into a van, and brought them to the White House to demand an audience with Joe Biden. He paid them all $20 each for their time. The Utah native, who has been making right wing-aligned content for the past few years, is part of the new wave of conservative “influencers” blurring the lines between journalism and agenda-pushing who have been embraced by the Trump administration. “This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 Pulitzer prizes,” Vice President JD Vance wrote in response to his Minnesota video published on Dec. 26. The claims made in the video have been thoroughly discredited, while the story itself is at least five years old. Five of the centers Shirley visited have previously been the subject of federal investigation into fraudulent benefit claims and cleared of wrongdoing, while dozens of individuals were otherwise convicted. In a race-baiting rant at his Motel-a-Lardo New Year’s Eve party, Trump claimed the Minnesota fraudsters had stolen $18 billion—a figure which corresponds with total federal funding for 14 social programs in the state since 2018. Shirley, who has been confronted by CNN over issues with his reporting, has claimed that the “mainstream media” is attacking him and politicizing his claims. Shirley visited daycare centers that wouldn’t grant him entrance - which is the policy of all child daycare centers not to allow access to anyone other than parents, guardians, or those with written permission from a parent or guardian - and claimed that was “evidence of fraud.”

Despite having a “nice New Year’s party” of the plastic fantastic prime candidates to meet Madame Guillotine at Motel-A-Lardo, Sundowning Grampa suffered yet another Adderall overdose, resulting in him leaving the party to crawl to the Golden Throne and engage in yet another night of shitposting to distract us all from the fact he’s a worthless piece of ignorant shit. This time, taking the opportunity to harm the Iranian Resistance by providing the tar for the regime to attack them as “dupes of America.” (Exactly as People With Brains warned Western leaders to stay away from doing.) At 3am, he went on Lies Anti-Social to spew: “If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” The post came an hour after Fux Snooze reported that six people had been killed Thursday during anti-government demonstrations in Iran, where protesters have called for an end to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s 36-year rule.

The Kennedy Center’s Baghdad Barbie put a perplexing PR spin on the abysmal ratings for the latest TV broadcast of the Kennedy Center Honors, which was hosted by “professional MC” Trump. Roma Daravi, the VP of public relations for the Kennedy Center, said: “Comparing this year’s broadcast ratings to prior years is a classic apples-to-oranges comparison and evidence of far-left bias. The program performed extremely well across key demographics and platforms, despite industry and timing disadvantages, including a Tuesday air date two days before Christmas. And on social media, Honors garnered 1.5 billion impressions in just one night - up from only 50 million similar impressions last year.” In what universe did any of that word salad make sense? She also claimed overall television “usage” was down by around 20 percent year over year, and the Honors tied for the No.1 spot among adults aged 25-54 with a live NBA doubleheader. Roma’s a contender with Baghdad Trisha for best MAGA Bullshitter of the Year. Although Baghdad Trisha has more entries in the contest.

Here’s good news: The creationist theme park Ark Encounter was hit with a measles scare after an infected person visited the Kentucky attraction.According to the Kentucky Department for Public Health, the infected person was not vaccinated for measles. “Health officials have identified potential measles exposures in Grant County, Kentucky. An unvaccinated, out-of-state traveler stayed at the Holiday Inn & Suites in Dry Ridge from December 28 to 30, 2025 and visited the Ark Encounter on December 29, 2025,” the department said in a notice posted to Facebook. “Measles is a highly contagious respiratory virus that can cause serious health complications, especially in young children. Vaccination is the best protection against measles. Immunization against measles comes through the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.” The Wrong RFK Got Shot responded to a recent measles outbreak in Texas by insisting that the federal government should not mandate the vaccine. He has also raised safety concerns about the vaccine, insisting that it had not been adequately tested - this despite the fact the MMR vaccine has been successfully used for 57 years. What’s a MAGAt who doesnt get vaccinated for a preventable disease and then catches it and dies? Proof that Evolution works.

Over the same holiday where Trump changed his story on getting an MRI to a CT scan, and admitted that he was taking more than the recommended daily dose of aspirin, he also announced that he has been taking even more cognitive tests. He posted on Lies Anti-Social Thursday night: “The White House Doctors have just reported that I am in “PERFECT HEALTH,” and that I “ACED” (Meaning, was correct on 100% of the questions asked!), for the third straight time, my Cognitive Examination, something which no other President, or previous Vice President, was willing to take. P.S., I strongly believe that anyone running for President, or Vice President, should be mandatorily forced to take a strong, meaningful, and proven Cognitive Examination. Our great Country cannot be run by “STUPID” or INCOMPETENT PEOPLE! President DJT” I am glad to see I am in complete agreement with Preznit Most Persistent Dumbfuck Ever on this point.

Reacting to Trump’s admission he consumes daily doses of aspirin well beyond what his doctors have recommended, Dr. Vin Gupta told an MS NOW host Friday that Trump’s bid to have as thin a blood as possible likely will lead to added health risks. One hopes Dilbert will continue to disobey his doctors on aspirin intake and continue eating habits like a mid-day snack of a Big Mac, Wuarter Pounder With Cheese, Filet-o-Fish, a chocolate milkshake and french fries. That much cholesterol at a sitting is bound to make things better for us as he continues. We may yet see that massive fatal myocardial infarction in 2026.

Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok deleted Trump from a photo of him and former President Joe Biden when publicly asked to remove the man “regarded as one of the worst presidents of all time.” Chris D. Jackson, a political strategist, trolled Musk and MAGA on Friday using the tech billionaire’s own platform. “Hey @grok, remove the man who is regarded as one of the worst presidents of all time,” he instructed the chatbot in a public post to X. Attached to the post was a photo of the two men walking side by side.

AI researcher Gary Marcus has an ineresting forecast that was included in a Politico piece that laid out 15 potential “black swan events” that could shape the coming year and “stun the world.”

Marcus: “By the end of 2026, President Trump will have begun to distance himself from the aggressively pro-AI industry policies that characterized his AI strategy in 2025,” wrote retired New York University professor and AI entrepreneur Gary Marcus. “The giant AI infrastructure plays (like Project Stargate) that he championed after his inauguration will look like an unprofitable and underused mistake. So will his utter failure to meaningfully regulate AI, against the will of voters and political leaders both left and right. As a result, Trump will, rightly, take heat for every downside from AI (from deepfakes to chatbot-induced delusions and suicides to massive AI-induced cyberattacks). Public backlash against data centers, rising energy prices and rapacious AI companies will grow. AI stocks may tank. Generative AI, once Silicon Valley’s golden child, will start to look like a fad, a solution in search of a problem with economics that don’t add up. Trump will bolt for the door. ‘Coffee chatbot, we hardly knew ye,’ Trump will be overheard to say.”

ICE plans to make Phoenix, Arizona, its “hub of removal” in the Southwest, ramping up raids in a city that is part of the famously purple Maricopa County, according to The Bulwark. Former DHS officials still in touch with those under ICE Barbie said the Arizona capital will “become the next focus of arrests, detentions, and deportations.” A new emphasis on Phoenix, which has a progressive mayor but is not considered a Democratic stronghold, would mark a notable change for the administration as it starts 2026. A robust ICE presence in a swing state may ultimately backfire for Republicans. Polls show Trump’s deportation crusade is among the issues that are dragging down his approval rating. A Pew Research Center survey in October found 53 percent of respondents said Trump is doing “too much” in his migrant crackdown. Only 10 percent of respondents felt the administration was doing “too little.” Chuck Coughlin, a former GOP politician who is now president of Arizona-based polling firm HighGround, told the Bulwark an ICE crackdown “won’t go over well with voters,” especially those in Maricopa County, which is home to 60 percent of the state’s electorate. “I don’t look at this as being a positive move in Maricopa County. It’s not going to play well. Everybody believes the border control problem is under control.”

The corruption will continue: The new details about how MAGA Inc. raised $100 million in the second half of 2025 included a number of entities with business before the administration, wrote Ken Vogel and Karen Yourish, including “$12.5 million each from Greg Brockman, a co-founder of the artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, and his wife, Anna Brockman; and contributions totaling $20 million from the parent company of Crypto.com,” as well as donors from vape company Juul, whose product recently secured FDA approval, and American Rights and Reform PAC, a pro-marijuana group. But one of the more striking cases, said the article, involved one Isabela Herrera. Herrera “initially donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc. in late 2024 as her father, Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker, was facing federal charges for trying to bribe the governor of Puerto Rico in 2020,” said the report. “In May, a top Trump appointee at the Justice Department authorized a misdemeanor plea deal to settle the case, overruling career prosecutors who had pushed for a harsher sentence. In July, Ms. Herrera donated another $1 million to MAGA Inc.” A report back in August 2025 detailed how MAGA Inc. is effectively operating as a platform to sell access and favor with the president, despite it ostensibly being an independent and distinct entity not under control of the president by law. Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who has been covering the Epstein for years, has speculated that donors to pro-Trump causes who may appear in the Epstein case files are leaning on Trump and the InJustice Department to obscure their names in the Congressionally-required release of the documents.

TACO! TACO! TACO! Yes indeed, Dilbert ALWAYS chickens out. When fellow coup-plotter ex-Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison for organizing the coup to overturn the election that cast him from power and stay in office, his good buddy Trump got all huffy and decided he would extort the Brazilian government into freeing his fellow criminal by imposing a 50% tariff on all Brazilian products. However, after Bolsonaro’ssentence was upheld by the Brazilian Supreme Court and President Lula da Silva showed no signs of back down in the fact of Trump’s huffing and puffing and threats to blow houses down, our Coward-in-Chief became friendly to Lula (“The Hun is at your throat or at your feet” - old British saying two World Wars ago). Friday - the day Bolsonaro, 70, began his 27 year sentence without time off for good behavior, TACO removed all the important tariffs on Brazilian products (MAGAts like coffee). EVERY TIME anyone stands up to him - for any reason - he always chickens out and backs down, no matter how much blather, bluster and bullshit was thrown at the opponent. There’s a lesson here for American corporations, universities, and over-rated white shoe ambulance-chaser outfits.

Over Tuesday, December 30, and Wednesday, December 31, U.S. Southern Command announced it attacked five more small boats that it claims were being operated by “narco- terrorists,” killing another 13 people while possibly leaving some survivors. These latest war crimes bring the total to at least 35 and the number of people killed to at least 115. I’m sorry to say this, but the military personnel who are “only following orders” as they paerticipate in this assault are going to discover in 2029 that the statement in the UCMJ that “I was only following orders” is not a defense to war crimes, is very definitely true.

Friday, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a California law that prohibited people from openly carrying guns in most public places, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, said the ban violates Californians’ Second Amendment rights and conflicts with “this Nation’s history and tradition.” California had banned openly carrying firearms in counties with a population greater than 200,000 people. In a 2-1 decision, the judges said that previously Californians were free to carry unloaded handguns openly and holstered for self-defense. However, they said California had joined the minority of states that have “adopted such severe restrictions,” effectively banning open carry “for the overwhelming majority of its citizens.” The majority opinion relied heavily on a 2022 Supreme Court ruling striking down a New York law that had required people applying to get a license to carry a concealed weapon to show that they have “proper cause” to carry a gun.

The following record albums turn 50 years old this year: Songs in the Key of Life, by Stevie Wonder; Hotel California, by The Eagles; Fly Like an Eagle, by The Steve Miller Band; Rocks, by Aerosmith; Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, by AC/DC; Arrival, by ABBA; Blue Moves, by Elton John. And even ABBA is better than the recycled corporate crap produced last year.

You are not the crazy ones. These are the times that try men’s (and women’s) souls. This is the fight of our lifetimes, and the challenge of our generation. I realize times are getting harder, which is why some readers understandably didn’t renew their subscriptions. If you happen to be in a position to help make up the gap, please consider joining the other paid subscribers here at That’s Another Fine Mess to keep things going. It’s only 21 cents a day. I am deeply thankful to those who have done so.

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