Category: 2026

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Sunday Tiedrich

when talking about yesterday’s smash-and-grab escapade in Venezuela — and the plunder to come — where do we even start? with how lawless it is? because it absolutely is completely fucking illegal — and unconstitutional.

with how insane it is? because it’s off-the-charts crazypants.

with how unnecessary it is? the American people didn’t vote for this.

with how unrealistic the goals are? of course it’s all unrealistic. Donny and his toadies live in a fantasy world.

with how it’s just a naked grab for Venezuela’s oil? no fucking shit, Sherlock.

how about we start here: let’s talk about how impaired and unfit for office Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants is — because he could barely stay awake during his own victory lap.

as soon as someone else started talking, Preznit Fuckwit started sawing logs — while standing up. who says Dear Leader isn’t a man of many talents?

as Donald Rumsfeld so wisely counseled us during the Iraq debacle, sometimes you go to war with the narcoleptic fart factory you have, not the narcoleptic fart factory you want.

for fuck’s sake, what’s with all the slurring?

“the United Sases militareese the strongest and most fearsome military on the planet by far, with capabiliseesanshkills our enemies can— [long pause] scarshely begin to imagine.”

oh come on. this is so embarrassing. Donny can no longer read. his brain is fried. maybe he should stick to what he’s good at: pointing at a drawing of a camel. can someone get Dear Leader a pudding cup and lead him back to his room? he should be in bed, not overseeing a war.

hey, you know who’s going to be running Venezuela now? Donny is.

“we’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”

oh, how lovely. the shitwit with the attention span of a coked-up squirrel — who acts first and thinks never — is now going to two running two countries at the same time. the business genius who, as his fifth consecutive casino went bankrupt, said ‘let’s open a sixth’ is going to be making decisions about two ginormous economies — all while shopping for marble for his vulgar Epstein Dance Hall where the East Wing used to be.

yeah, right.

now here’s a question: who the fuck is running Venezuela right this very second?

Donny doesn’t know, or apparently even seem to care.

Trump: “There is nobody to take over. You have a vice president who has been appointed by Maduro. She’s I guess the president. She was sworn in just a little while ago. She had a long conversation with Marco and she said, ‘We’ll do whatever you need.’ She really doesn’t have a choice.”

in fact, the Venezuelan Veep has already told Donny to go fuck himself.

Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez condemned the U.S. attack and capture of President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, saying in a televised address the nation “will never return to being the colony of another empire.”

Rodriguez insists that Maduro is still Venezuela’s president.

“There is only one president in Venezuela, and his name is Nicolas Maduro Moros,” Rodriguez said in a televised address to Venezuelans hours after the U.S. strikes and Maduro’s capture.

and according to Reuters, Rodriguez is in Russia right now.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez is in Russia, four sources familiar with her movements said on Saturday, after President Donald Trump said President Nicolas Maduro had been seized by U.S. forces after an attack on the country.

so, again, who is running the country?

Donny’s already thrown the opposition leader under the bus.

Trump on María Corina Machado: “I think it’d be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman but she doesn’t have the respect.”

the thin-skinned bastard is still big mad that Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize and he didn’t, isn’t he?

this plundering of Venezuela going to be a fucking disaster — and not the fun, entertaining, Stephen-Colbert-eating-popcorn kind of disaster.

it’s going to be a five-alarm shit-show, complete with chaos and suffering civilians.

back in November, The New York Times actually committed a journalism and ran a long piece about how during Donny’s first term, the military ran a simulation on what would happen if the US ousted Maduro. their conclusion was that it would be a clusterfuck.

but Donny doesn’t give a shit about any possible turmoil and violence among the Venezuelan people. Venezuelans can go fuck themselves sideways, as far as Donny’s concerned. he’s made it very clear that this is all about grabbing that sweet, sweet crude.

 

Fox & Friends: “what do you see as the future of Venezuela’s oil industry?”

Donny: “well I see that we’re gonna be very strongly involved in it. that’s all. what can I say. we have the greatest oil companies in the world.”

and — oh look — the ‘greatest oil companies in the world’ are already on the job.

Officials from top Wall Street firms will be traveling to Venezuela to investigate “investment prospects” of the country. “The trip will feature about 20 officials from the finance, energy and defense sectors.”

hey, remember that deal Donny made with oil executives back during his campaign? the one where he said ‘give me a billion dollars and I’ll take care of you’?

well, here’s your quid for that bit of pro quo. it’s all so fucking corrupt, and it’s going on right under our noses.

but Donny, who’s going to pay for all this shit?

reporter: “is it possible that the US ends up administering Venezuela for years?”

Donny: “well, you know, it won’t cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial.”

oh lord, how fucking delusional. ‘the war going to pay for itself.’ gee, where have we heard this before? oh, yeah: back when Dick Cheney and his merry band of fuckface neocons decided to plunder Iraq. every single one of those shitbags bragged about how their awesome adventure was going to pay for itself.

“Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will.”
— Richard Perle, chair
The Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board
July 11, 2002

spoiler alert: the Iraq War ended up costing us over three trillion dollars.

hey, New York Times Editorial Board, could you explain to the nice people why Donny’s lawless adventurism sets a horrendous example for the rest of the world?

“By proceeding without any semblance of international legitimacy, valid legal authority or domestic endorsement, Mr. Trump risks providing justification for authoritarians in China, Russia and elsewhere who want to dominate their own neighbors.”

exactly. Donny bombing the shit out of Venezuela and going ‘mine now’ — because reasons — is no different than Putin’s war on Ukraine.

what are we going to say if Xi decides to roll tanks into Taiwan? spoiler alert: we’re not going to be able to say shit — because the US is now a rogue nation.

so much for Saint Reagan’s vision of America as a ‘shining city on a hill.’ awesome job, Donny, we’re now a pariah state. take another victory lap.

oh shit, they are taking another victory lap. they’re already drooling over the prospect of the next war.

Rubio: “If I lived in Havana in the government, I’d be concerned.”

how about Marco Rubio take his unearned hubris and shove it where the sun don’t shine?

maybe win the first war first, you arrogant fools.

you know who could put an end to this fuckery in a heartbeat? Congressional Republicans, by using their Constitutionally-mandated powers to authorize wars — but they’re not going to. in fact, they’ve already rolled right the fuck over.

Tom Cotton: “Congress isn’t notified when the FBI is going to arrest a drug trafficker or cyber criminal here in the US, nor should Congress be notified when the executive branch is executing arrests on indicted persons. and that’s really what you can make the analogy to here.”

that, folks, is how the Republicans are justifying allowing Donny to do whatever the fuck he wants — by pretending that this isn’t a war, it’s a law enforcement action.

‘war? what war? do you see a war anywhere? this is just Donny carrying out an arrest warrant for Maduro and his wife. we’re powerless to stop that shit. who says it’s a war?’

fuck off, you cowards.

now let’s talk about the Democratic response to Donny’s lawless fuckery, because there are two ways to go about it: the right way, and the Chuck Schumer way.

here’s the right way:

Rep. Seth Moulton: “is anyone going to just stop for a second and be honest? this is insane. what the hell are we doing? we’ve got a lot of problems in America today, and invading, occupying, running Venezuela does not solve any of them.”

thank you, Rep. Moulton. we’re all standing with you.

now here’s the Chuck Schumer way.

Asked about the possibility of impeachment, Schumer says ‘we hope that we can have support from our Republican colleagues to put a brake on this long before it gets that far.’”

oh fuck straight off to the moon and back, Chuckles. how fucking naive can one person be? on what planet are Republicans are going to put a breakon this? did you not hear what Tom Cotton just said, you hayseed?

let’s be clear-eyed about our Senate Minority Leader: Schumer’s a great guy to have around if there’s absolutely nothing at stake. need someone to speak at the dedication of a new post office? Chuck’s your man. need someone to make sure all the procedural i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed in some piece of shrimp boat legislation? here comes Chuck!

but Schumer isn’t a fighter. he never has been. right now, he should be screaming his head off about impeachement. that’s what Republicans would be doing if it were Joe Biden smashing and grabbing in South America. but instead, he’s making weak mewling noises about ‘support from our Republican colleagues.’ what the fuck?

Chuck Schumer just isn’t up to the task. it’s time for him to retire.

finally, let’s talk about how hastily this war was thrown together — because it did seem rushed, didn’t it? and those stage-managed photos going around, of Donny and Liddle Marco and Flippy McCrushnuts, acting all warlike and stuff?

that’s not the White House Situation Room. nor is it a secure SCIF, where classified intel can be discussed without fear of leaks.

for fuck’s sake, it’s the dining room of Motel-a-Lago, partitioned with black sheets. anyone wandering past, on their way to breakfast, could have heard what was going on.

how fucking rinky-dink is that?

so, why did this thing have to happen in the dead of night during New Year’s weekend?

it’s all about the timing.

Congress is back in session this week, and they have a lot of stuff on their plate — stuff Donny doesn’t want them dealing with. like the Epstein Files, for which the DOJ just missed another deadline. then there are the Obamacare subsidies, which expired four days ago.

fuck’s sake, there’s another possible government shutdown looming on January 30 — that needs to be dealt with, too.

but now, all anyone is going to be talking about is Venezuela.

that’s pretty convenient, isn’t it?

this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

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Living In The United States Of Embarrassment

Living In The United States Of Embarrassment
John Pavlovitz

A few months ago, I confessed to a close friend I’d been imagining myself in a way I never had before in over half a century of living here in America: I’d been imagining myself as an expat.

Seeing my social media timeline, now filled with breaking news that is the stuff of horror film and chilling 1930s newsreels, I’d been daydreaming about what it might be like to wake up in a place that doesn’t feel the way this one does: oppressive and disappointing, bitter and divided. I’ve pictured myself greeting the morning with expectancy, and moving through the day with the simple exhalation of belonging, of truly feeling at home in the place I call home.

At first, it was difficult to admit this newly-burgeoning fantasy of flight from my place of birth, until I found out how many here are similarly prone to daydreaming right now, as well. Over the last year, tens of millions of Americans moved from national pride to abject humiliation, exchanging the promise and possibility of what we could be for the grim reality of what we are. After the last election, we spent a few horrible days or weeks in stunned sadness, and most of the rest of the time since, alternating between rage and shame.

So many of us understand how horrifyingly ridiculous this all is. We see every illegal, immoral, violent thing this Administration is doing. We know how thoroughly batsh*t crazy our President is, and we’re well aware that he has absolutely no business running a street corner hot dog cart, let alone the Land of the Free and home of the Brave.

Every day seems to deepen the severity and magnitude of our never-ending national facepalm. That’s because this authoritarian regime filled with felons, grifters, insurrectionists, and sociopaths has put many of us in a precarious position that we’ve never been in our entire lives: we’re now ashamed of our homeland.

No, not of the ideas of Libery, equality, and Diversity that birthed this young and troubled nation, not the tremendous sacrifice that’s been offered by past generations in order to protect and preserve our fragile democracy, not the Nobel Constitution that once formed the very bedrock of our collective, not the things we’ve done together to this point to try and craft a country opening and welcoming.

But we are embarrassed by this President and his kleopcratic Cabinet, and we’re embarrassed to live in America as they represent it to the world. We’re ashamed that they are speaking for us, serving as our ambassadors, being our surrogates, because we know it all reflects terribly on those of us who call this place home. It’s exhausting to try to live, work, and study while holing your breath and hiding your face, alongside so many who seem proud of this ugliness that is defining us.

As a result, so many things are now shame-triggers for us: the mention of his name, the very sight of him, the flag, the word America. Hearing those first few words of our National Anthem, “Oh say, can you see…” is cause for mourning, because right now it’s nearly impossible to see those things we should still proudly hail.

Perhaps the only true comfort we’ve found in these days has been the solidarity of like-hearted humans who are equally humiliated; the affinity we have discovered together, like arm-locked, rebellious souls fiercely burdened to see one another through a terrible disaster. We are fellow captives trauma-bonding in a tenuous hostage situation that seems certain to end poorly. If misery loves company, then we are certainly finding such heavily grieving company now.

So yes, we are united here in our great embarrassment; people of every pigmentation, religious affiliation, orientation, and nation of origin. We are all greatly ashamed of the America that the world is experiencing and the one we see ourselves becoming. And no, most of us are not leaving, even if those loud and angry few who are not mortified but proud of a wannabe despot and his genuflecting gaggle of enablers would prefer we did.

We are staying to push back, to advocate for one another, to repair what is being damaged in whatever incremental ways we can. We are staying to be the dignified and rational response to the most undignified, irrational behavior by those in our leadership. We are staying because we know that our nation, as shameful as it is, is better than those who have commandeered it and made it into the blight on this world that it has become.

We’re shaking our collective heads here in the Land of the Freaked-out and the Home of the Facepalm, trying to make America good again despite our leaders… and we will.

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Right?!

You didn’t seriously think 2026 was going to be any different than 2025, did you?

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Friday Tiedrich

are you sitting down right now? I sure hope so, because here’s some shocking news: it turns out that the guy who lied to us about bone spurs, and lied to us about hush money, and lied to us about his Ukraine phone call — and about a hurricane and covid and the election and his height and his weight and his golf scores and how tariffs work, and about thirty thousand other things — has been lying about his health.

I know, right?

apparently, Donny got wind of the fact that the Wall Street Journal was going to commit a wall-street-journalism by documenting all the ways in which Dear Leader is falling apart physically — and he reacted in the most Donny way possible: he phoned the Journal and started whining about how unfair they’re being to him.

In an impromptu phone interview that came after the Journal shared details about its reporting with the White House, the president expressed irritation about the public debate over his health. He has grown upset with his own White House staff for not promoting him as more vigorous.

spoiler alert: this whole ‘interview’ is just Donny lying his big dumb pumpkin face off, spewing the usual fever-swamp hallucinations about how he’s super fucking healthy — healthy like no one thought possible, maybe the healthiest person ever.

“My health is perfect,” he added.

whatever you say, President Rottinghand.

speaking of which, we’ve got it all wrong about Donny’s rotting hand. those bruises, apparently, happen because Donny’s been gobbling aspirin for decades.

The large dose of aspirin he chooses to take daily has caused him to bruise easily, he said, and he has been encouraged by his doctors to take a lower dose. But Trump has declined to switch because he has been taking it for 25 years. “I’m a little superstitious,” he said in the interview.

oh please, the only thing of Donny’s that ‘bruises easily’ is his paper-thin ego. but do tell us more about your crackpot theories of medicine, Mister Windmills Give You Brain Cancer — we can’t get enough of that shit.

“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” Trump said. “I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?”

Donny wants nice, thin blood like no one thought possible — and he asks us if that ‘makes sense,’ not wanting thick blood gumming up the works.

of fucking course it doesn’t make any sense. don’t take my word for it. let’s listen to an expert. Dr. Jonathan Reiner was Dick Cheney’s cardiologist for thirty years, so I’m pretty sure he knows what he’s talking about.

“when we use any anti-coagulant, medications to prevent clotting, those don’t thin the blood. it’s not like changing something from gumbo to chicken soup. it doesn’t make it thinner, it makes you less likely to clot. it used to be that we would treat a lot of people with aspirin therapy to prevent heart attacks — but we’ve learned in recent years that particularly people over the age of 70, not only is there no benefit in terms of just primary prevention, trying to prevent a cardiac event by giving them aspirin, that there can be hazard.and the hazard can be bleeding. significant bleeding. so here’s the interesting thing about this. the president is apparently is taking 325 milligrams of aspirin per day, which is essentially one adult size aspirin tablet. but the dosage that we use for patients, even with documented chronic artery disease, is a quarter that. 81 milligrams per day. so why is the president taking an unorthodox dose of aspirin? the media has published many photos of his right hand, and now maybe his left hand, with his chronic bruise, and the White House has said that this is related to chronic aspirin therapy. so if you’re bruising a lot, and your doctor says you’re on too much aspirin, why wouldn’t you go down to a lower dose?”

ooh ooh! I know the answer to the doctor’s question: it’s because Donny’s a fucking imbecile who is serenely convinced of his own imaginary genius. he know more about doctoring than all the doctors.

of course Donny isn’t going to take the recommended dosage (which isn’t even recommended any more). small pills are for losers. real men chow down on the big-ass kind. so naturally Donny’s going to take the aspirin that goes up to eleven.

meanwhile, the White House is sticking to its ‘Donny’s fist is mangled because he shakes a lot of hands’ fairy tale — but even Donny’s own toadies know that’s a load of shit.

His physical signs of aging are becoming more evident to some of his closest advisers. His skin is so delicate that Pam Bondi, now his attorney general, caused his hand to bleed when she nicked him with her ring while giving him a high-five at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

in fact, Donny’s left hand recently appeared to have a hole in it.

so, who is Donny shaking hands with that he’s ended up with punctures on the back of his hand? Wolverine?

Trump said he applies makeup to his hands after he gets “whacked again by someone.” He added: “I have makeup that’s, you know, easy to put on, takes about 10 seconds.”

if it takes Donny ‘ten seconds’ to cover his hand, I wonder how many seconds it takes him to spackle his face.

I’m guessing five.

obviously, we’re being lied to. no one is shaking Donny’s hand to the point where the fucking thing looks like someone slammed it in a car door. Donny has clearly been repeatedly receiving intravenous fluids for kind of ailment that they’re hiding from the public. it’s an insult to our intelligence for the White House to insist otherwise.

hey, here’s something else we’ve been getting wrong about Donny. he’s not a narcoleptic fart factory who chronically saws logs in public. he’s just relaxing his eyes.

“I’ll just close. It’s very relaxing to me,” he said in describing shutting his eyes. “Sometimes they’ll take a picture of me blinking, blinking, and they’ll catch me with the blink.”

you know, like he relaxed his eyes at the Pope’s funeral.

who among us hasn’t momentarily relaxed their eyes to the point where their mouth falls open and their entire body goes slack?

oh look, Donny and the White House are once again lying to us about every fucking thing.

when is an MRI not and MRI? apparently when it’s a CT scan, that’s when.

He has for weeks said that he underwent an MRI at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in October. When asked about the procedure by the Journal, Trump and his doctor said he got a different form of imaging: a CT scan. “It wasn’t an MRI,” Trump told the Journal. “It was less than that. It was a scan.”

Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, Trump’s doctor, confirmed in a statement to the Journal that Trump had received a CT scan.

what in the actual fuck? after weeks of Donny and his flunkies telling us that he got an MRI, now it’s a CT scan? and even the doctor who released that farcical ‘summary’ about Donny’s MRI is now on board that it was a CT scan?

do you think maybe Dr. Barbabella could go on record and explain to us why, if we were all mistaken about which procedure Donny underwent, he didn’t correct us, y’know, two fucking months ago?

The White House declined to make Barbabella available for an interview.

oh. huh.

we’re either being lied to now, or were lied to then. I’m not sure which is the better scenario.

for the umpteenth time, Donny’s handlers are feeding us some some fairy-tale shit-sandwich about Dear Leader’s health — and we’re expected to shut the fuck up and swallow it wholesale.

I’m sorry, but this guy is not well.

look, Donny is suffering from a lot of shit. he is clearly not up to the rigors of presidenting. he disappears from public for days at a time, without explanation. he’s tired. he’s confused. his memory is shot. he can’t tell fact from fiction. he’s hard of hearing. his hands are rotting and his cankles look like they’re about to explode.

that’s a whole lot of pathologies. let’s put them all together and call it fuckbrainscabosis.

We the People have a right to know what’s going on. Dear Leader’s handlers need to stop jerking us around, and release Donny’s complete medical records. tell us why he got an MRI, or CT scan, or whatever the fuck we’re calling it today. and how about explaining to us once and for all how his shot-to-pieces ear magically regenerated itself.

and — as long as we’re calling for releasing stuff — let’s go. Dead Pedo Bestie Files. snap it up already.

Zohran Mamdani was sworn into office yesterday as Mayor of New York — and here’s one of the very first things he did: he issued an executive order shitcanning a metric fuckload of previous mayor Eric Adams’ executive orders.

“He has wiped off the books EVERY Eric Adams executive order issued on or after September 26, 2024, the day Adams was indicted on federal bribery charges.”

this is how it’s done — and I certainly hope that the next Democratic president is paying close attention.

this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.