RUNNING TOWARD THE EXIT TO WEEK 32

Jane Goodall with a friend in the Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania - December 1965

It breaks my heart to make this news today’s lead: Jane Goodall, whose lifelong work as a primatologist helped broaden the world’s understanding of animal behavior and emotions, died yesterday at age 91. Her field studies with chimpanzees not only broke barriers for women and changed the way scientists study animals, but documented emotions and personality traits within these primates that blurred the line between humans and the animal kingdom. Goodall arrived in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in 1960 at the request of her boss, renowned anthropologist and paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey. There, the 26-year-old who had long been fascinated with Africa and its animals – but had no formal higher education – began her groundbreaking work observing and studying these intellectual primates in their natural habitat.At first, the chimps ran away from her. That changed when she met an older chimp she named David Graybeard. After following David through the forest, she offered him a palm nut. “He took the nut, he dropped it, but very gently squeezed my fingers,” Goodall recalled. “That’s how chimpanzees reassure each other. So in that moment, we communicated in a way that must have predated human language.” According to her institute, she passed away due to natural causes in California during a speaking tour. All the great men - who it turned out didn’t know shit from shinola - were forced to stand in awe of a woman who thought becoming part of a community was the way to understand our similarities across boundaries. Further proof of why I wish women ran the world. The only “dumb animals” on this planet are us.

Back to the fight:

It’s day 252 of the senile old fool’s disgusting public displays of his severe mental illnesses (yes, more than one) and there are 397 days left to end the insanity. In case you were wondering, the point of this week is to drive home the fact that “We are an unserious country run by unserious people.” That’s how we ended up in this mélange of absurdity and menace, embarrassment and threat.. As Tom Nichols described the scene: “This was exactly what George Washington feared could happen with an unscrupulous commander in chief... This farrago of fantasy, menace, and autocratic peacocking is the kind of thing that the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan evocatively called “boob bait for the Bubbas” and that George Orwell might have called “prolefeed.” (I’m adopting both) For friends observing Yom Kippur, there’s a helluva lot to consider this year, sadly. See you tomorrow.

Just in case you doubt that they will indeed be back, DHS has purchased a sinister surveillance tool that could allow ICE officers to monitor unsuspecting Americans as we go about our day.

DHS’s HSI and ICE now have software that is updated daily with “billions of pieces of location data from hundreds of millions of mobile phones,” according to procurement records reported by 404 Media Tuesday. HSI and ICE selected PenLink’s Tangles and Webloc because the package offers “forensic and predictive analytics,” which enables analysts to correlate those movements with social media. Demonstrations of similar tools have shown how these datasets can map visits to abortion clinics, churches, and other sensitive sites, and raise concerns over potential breaches of civil liberties. The purchase reverses ICE’s own January 2024 pledge that it had stopped purchasing “commercial telemetry data,” according to 404 Media. DHS has a troubled history with this type of surveillance. An IG report in September 2023 cited by 404 Media found CBP, ICE, and the Secret Service “did not adhere to privacy policies” or build adequate rules before buying and using location feeds, citing a DHS official who tracked co-workers. Having been urged to halt until safeguards were in place, ICE defended its continued use because the data “produces investigative leads,” reports the outlet. Sen. Ron Wyden told 404 Media in a statement that “every American should be concerned” that ICE is again buying location data without warrants.

Monday/Tuesday night in Chicago, ICE went on a rampage. ICE thugs waved their guns at people in an apartment hallway, handcuffed people who had no warrants, and zip-tied children together in a in a South Shore apartment building. Residents and neighbors described the raid as a traumatic event, with one telling ABC7 Chicago News that the building was shaking. Resident Pertissue Fisher said ICE treated them all as if they were “nothing.” She described coming out into the hallway of the complex in her nightgown around 10PM on Monday, to meet a gun in her face and people yelling, “Police!” “It was scary, because I had never had a gun in my face,” she told ABC7. “They asked my name and my date of birth and asked me, did I have any warrants? And I told them, ‘No,’ I didn’t.” Nonetheless, they handcuffed her, not to release her until 3 AM. Neighbors told ABC7 there were dozens of ICE agents. A woman described being grabbed by agents as she put her key in her lock. She reports she was detained without being told why. Other neighbors described ducking as they heard “several flash bangs.” DHS has denied reports that federal agents use zip ties on children. “This is categorically false. During a recent encounter and arrest of an 18-year-old illegal alien, he was photographed alongside minor children in immigration court in San Antonio, Texas. ICE officers do not restrain minors,” Tricia McLaughlin said in June. After ICE agents fatally shot a Mexican immigrant on September 12th, DHS issued a statement justifying the killing saying the federal agent was “seriously injured.” “Two weeks ago, a man was shot and killed by ICE in Franklin Park, Illinois. Shortly after, ICE issued a statement justifying the killing, saying the federal agent was ‘seriously injured,’’’ Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said. Bodycam footage from Franklin Park police officers “showed the hurt ICE agent describing his own injuries as ‘nothing major.’”

Today I need another Oregon sunset; I bet you do, too:

Trump’s ICE agents are wildly untrained to the point that they raise loaded guns to aim at people for no reason, shove a 79-year-old man to the floor in passing just for fun it seems, shove a young mother to the ground after pulling her hair, and try to shove their own loaded weapon into their pants, missing a holster or even the ability to get inside their pants so they end up sticking it into a belt loop with it aimed at their genitals. These are not people whose job is to deescalate violence or deal with crime. They are either not trained on rules of engagement like regular police or the military, or they have such emotional issues that they are unable to uphold the standards. Either way, they would be unlikely to pass an exam to be a police officer by any qualified person. Over and over again, ICE thugs incite confrontations and violence, with Portland police saying as much in a court hearing.

The White House is targeting Democratic states with its first wave of cuts to federal projects following the government shutdown, impacting billions of dollars in funding for energy and infrastructure in New York, California and elsewhere. Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said Wednesday the Trump administration is cancelling nearly $8 billion in funding for energy programs he characterized as part of “the Left’s climate agenda.” The cuts will impact 16 states — all of which voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election. Vought did not identify exactly which programs would be cut in the social media announcement. Earlier Wednesday, Vought said the White House is withholding $18 billion in funds from New York City’s Second Ave. subway and Gateway tunnel projects, the latter which connects New Jersey and New York. George Latimer (D-N.Y.), who represents the New York City suburbs in Westchester County, said: “Political revenge. Clearly outlined by Trump, time and again. He sees the U.S. as Blue and Red, and Blue states are enemies. As he has said many times, he hates his enemies; he is the retribution. Has he announced any rescission of any projects in Florida or Texas?” Vought has not publicly announced cuts that affected a state that backed Trump in 2024. “We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday.

Trump said on Lies Anti-Social last night that he would meet today with Vought “to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut.” He said they would discuss whether the cuts would be “temporary or permanent.” “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with CNBC this morning that he could “guarantee” Republicans will not meet Democratic leaders’ demands to extend Obamacare subsidies as a way to end the government shutdown.

It is time for Blue States to find a way to withhold tax payments from their citizens to the federal government. Let the red states die without their blue-state welfare checks. I am no officially in favor of Blue State Secession - with a resettlement program for all the good people in the red states.

I’m not the only one who’s come to this conclusion: Yesterdasys NYT/Siena University poll revealed that most American voters believe the United States is too politically divided to solve problems. 64% of registered voters think the country’s sharp divisions cannot solve political problems, while only 33% say the political system can still address its problems. This is a huge jump from September 2020, when 42% thought the nation was too divided to solve its problems and 51% said the country could still solve its problems. Thank you very much, motherfucking Greedy Old Party.

Resistance is spreading: A protest erupted at FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s first open meeting yesterday since his failed attempt to remove Jimmy Kimmel from the air. People chanted “Fire Carr, the censorship czar,” while a sign language interpreter on-screen ensured the message from the demonstrators was available to all.

The EU has transferred €4bn to Ukraine using revenue generated from frozen Russian assets, the Ukrainian finance ministry revealed on Wednesday. European leaders have discussed the possibility of transferring up to €140bn in the same manner later this week. Moscow has warned it considers the procedure “theft” of its sovereign assets and will seek the prosecution of countries and individuals involved. (Tough shit, Vlad, don’t go invading other people) European leaders are meeting in Copenhagen this week to discuss the formation of a “drone wall” along their borders with Russia and Ukraine to stop drones violating European airspace.

It’s a safe guess no one had “Kamala Harris writes the top-selling political memoir of 2025” on their current event card, but yesterday publisher Simon & Schuster announced that “107 Days” sold 350k copies in its first week. “These sales put 107 Days on a trajectory to be the best-selling memoir published in 2025,” the publisher said. That contrasts with the July report that “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” by political journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf sold 6,000 hardcover copies in the first week of publication. (Even with that sales figure, it hit the NYT bestseller list at No. 4. Never believe the NYT list - it’s a scam created by the East Coast Thinks They’re Intellectuals Cabal. Which is why the Times never releases their data for placement.) Trump books experiencing lackluster sales include “Trump in Exile,” by the WSJ’s Meridith McGraw, which has sold 2,000 copies since its release in August, and Axios’ Alex Isenstadt’s “Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power,” published in March, which has sold around 3,000 copies as of last month. Jake Tapper’s Biden attack is the year’s bomberino. My books do a lot better than the DC Press Corpse does.

Color me Extremely Surprised and Happily So: Trump’s bid to gain greater control of the Federal Reserve has been dealt a blow after SCOTUS rejected his push to immediately fire central bank governor Lisa Cook. The conservative-dominated court ruled yesterday that Cook could remain in her job for now, thwarting Trump’s desire to have greater sway over monetary policy by stacking the Fed with loyalists. The move is likely to infuriate the president, who had tried to fire Cook over unproven claims of mortgage fraud. This is also good news for Adam Schiff and NY AG Letitia James. Last time I talked to her, she asked me (she lives in San Diego) if I was OK with all the riots going on here.

Wednesday on ABC’s Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos asked MAGA Mike an obvious question, “ The Democratic proposal is designed to prevent millions of Americans from losing their health insurance, losing Medicaid coverage, or paying higher healthcare premiums. Why are you against that?” He answered: “44 Senate Democrats voted to reject a clean, non-partisan continuing funding resolution to keep the... government open. The Democrats said instead that they wanted to give healthcare to illegal aliens instead of keeping critical services provided for the American citizens... Plain and simple, every Democrat in the House except one voted against the clean continuing resolution...It’s exactly what Chuck Schumer and other Democrats voted for in March. But they’ve changed their tune... Schumer is having political problems right now... and everybody knows that he’s trying to outrun the far left portion of his base. So he’s decided to inflict pain on the American people.” Stephanopoulos then nailed him:

“The proposal does not provide healthcare for illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants cannot buy healthcare under the Affordable Care Act. They cannot receive healthcare subsidies. Illegal immigrants are ineligible for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Program. The Democratic bill does not make them eligible.”

Not good news: Fux Snooze is averaging 3.33 million primetime viewers between Monday and Friday this year, topping CBS (3.17M), ABC (3.08M), and NBC (3.04M), as well as Fox (1.48M) and ESPN (2.13M), per Nielsen data released on Wednesday. MSNBC is averaging 1.15M primetime viewers, and CNN is averaging 641,000. Jesse Watters Primetime was the top primetime cable show, averaging 3.30 million viewers and 323,000 viewers in the demo; Sean Hannity was next in line, averaging 2.9 million viewers and 305,000 demo viewers. Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC Monday program, and Jen Psaki’s Tuesday through Friday show The Breifing 1.84 million viewers. All In With Chris Hayes averaged 865,000 viewers and 76,000 in the demo. Now I know why my dumbass sister is dumber than usual.

Despite the lies and misinformation, there is good news for our side: Close to half of Americans blame President Trump and Republicans for the current government shutdown, according to a new poll from The Washington Post. 47% of respondents said “Trump and Republicans in Congress” are “mainly responsible for the federal government partially shutting down,” while 30% pinned the blame on “Democrats in Congress.”

This probably doesn’t rank here with the rest, but it’s news that I like: Gary Oldman - who has fascinated me for nearly 40 years, since I first saw him inhabit the character of Sid Vicious in “Sid and Nancy” - received a knighthood at Windsor Castle Tuesday for his extensive services to drama, as part of the King’s Birthday Honours. I still think his portrayal of Winston Churchill in “Darkest Hour” is the best anyone has done. That’s not to mention everything else. He’s the kind of actor who - regardless of the movie he’s in - is never anything less than perfect. Tip o’ the hat to Sir Gary. Nice day to you, Guv’nah. Oh, and Roger Daltrey is also among those honored for a lifetime’s work. Perhaps he no longer believes “Hope I die, before I get old.” And I am not going to forget Dr. Samantha Morton, who knocked it out of the park as Catherine de’ Medici, the Renaissance Queen of France, in “The Serpent Queen,” one of the best historical dramas I’ve watched; she received an OBE (Order of the British Empire, for you non-Anglophiles.)

And I need a bunch of kittens:

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