Analytics

Friday, January 23, 2026

Post #7535 M: Jordan Klepper Asks Europeans About Trump’s Peace Prize Crusade; McClanahan on "Big Stick Diplomacy" is Back!; Why Venezuelans Support Trump’s Capture of Maduro

 Quote of the Day

I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. 
I simply follow my own feelings.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart  

Jordan Klepper Asks Europeans About Trump’s Peace Prize Crusade

McClanahan on "Big Stick Diplomacy" is Back!

Why Venezuelans Support Trump’s Capture of Maduro

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Rob Rogers via smerconish 

Musical Interlude: 1962 Top 100 Hits

I Wish That We Were Married - Ronnie & The Hi-Lites

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Thursday, January 22, 2026

Post #7534 M: Trump Takes Home The World's Biggest Prize; Stossel on Pulled Over and Robbed: How Police Take Money From Innocent People; Regime Change in Venezeula - Curt Mills vs Emmanuel Rincon

 Quote of the Day

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. 
The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
Abraham Lincoln  

Trump Takes Home The World's Biggest Prize

Stossel on Pulled Over and Robbed: How Police Take Money From Innocent People

Regime Change in Venezuela - Curt Mills vs Emmanuel Rincon

This is a bit dated in the sense Trump has since kidnapped Maduro, but it reflects a necessary discussion.

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Phil Hands via US News

Musical Interlude: 1962 Top 100 Hits

If I Had a Hammer - Peter, Paul & Mary

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Wednesday, January 21, 2026

Post #7533 M: Trump Throws Tantrum, Threatens Greenland Over Nobel Peace Prize Snub; Scott Horton on Daniel McAdams on Greenland, Venezuela and Iran

 Quote of the Day

Do what you can, 
with what you have, 
where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt  

Trump Throws Tantrum, Threatens Greenland Over Nobel Peace Prize Snub

Ron Paul on Trump, Tariffs, Nobel Prizes, and Greenland

Scott Horton on Daniel McAdams on Greenland, Venezuela and Iran

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

  Courtesy of Jack Ohman via smerconish 

Musical Interlude: 1962 Top 100 Hits

Gene Pitney "Town Without Pity"

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Tuesday, January 20, 2026

Post #7532 M: Weekend Update; The True Cost of Defense; Venezuelans sent by the U.S. to harsh Salvadoran mega-prison CECOT

 Quote of the Day

Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death 
can erase our good deeds.
Buddha  

Weekend Update

The True Cost of Defense

Venezuelans sent by the U.S. to harsh Salvadoran mega-prison CECOT

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Jack Ohman via smerconish

Musical Interlude: 1962 Top 100 Hits

 (Girls, Girls, Girls) Made To Love - Eddie Hodges

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Monday, January 19, 2026

Post #7531 M: Cabinet Meeting Cold Open - SNL; President Trump’s “Great Healthcare Plan"; McClanahan on When Did American Democracy Become "Post Truth"?

Quote of the Day

A strong conviction that something must be done 
is the parent of many bad measures.
Daniel Webster  

Cabinet Meeting Cold Open - SNL

President Trump’s “Great Healthcare Plan"

McClanahan on When Did American Democracy Become "Post Truth"?

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Rob Rogers via smerconish

Musical Interlude: 1962 Top 100 Hits 

Where Have All The Flowers Gone?"- Kingston Trio

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Sunday, January 18, 2026

Post #7530 Social Media Digest

 X/Twitter

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Post #7529 M: Trump Makes Milk Whole Again; Dumb BLEEP of the Week; Ron Paul on Price Controls Don't Work --Not Even For President Trump

 Quote of the Day

Far and away the best prize that life offers is 
the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Theodore Roosevelt 

Trump Makes Milk Whole Again

Dumb BLEEP of the Week

Ron Paul on Price Controls Don't Work --Not Even For President Trump

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Steve Breen via US News

Musical Interlude: 1962 Top 100 Hits

I’m Blue (The Gong-Gong Song) - Ikettes

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Saturday, January 17, 2026

Post #7528 J

 Pandemic Report

The latest CDC weekly stats:



The Sick Times:


COVID-19 cases are still increasing in DC and Hawaii, while decreasing from higher levels in most states. There are still locations, such as hospitals and nursing homes, that maintain masking requirements. Sky-high flu rates have lessened in the last couple of weeks, but the disease remains a high risk.

The latest  COVID-19 news:

Other Notes

The blog continues to obtain dubiously high pageviews. except today, but lower stats on Saturday are not unusual. I did publish my first essay of the year (on the Ross murder of Good in Minnesota); it attracted a reasonable number of hits, but given the hot topic, I thought it might do better. X/Twitter continues to go through a similar pattern, although fewer tweets than last week in the aftermath of the murder.

On YouTube, I've been an avid subscriber to these storytelling channels. Any regular daily blog readers know I usually have a cute kids video under the "Choose Life" feature. (I never married, no kids, but I have 6 younger siblings, 21 nephews and nieces, and 28 grands). I've written about these YouTube channels before; typically, there's a wealthy protagonist, often living in some wealthy empty penthouse; maybe there's a sad story like he's a widower or lost his only child to an accident or to a fatal disease. Then there's a child protagonist, usually a young girl, maybe about 5-8 yo. There's a compelling hook: maybe she doesn't have enough money to buy milk for the hungry baby sibling she's holding; maybe she's trying to sell a beloved doll or teddy bear to buy medicine for her dying single mother. It may focus on a crippled orphan always getting picked over by adoptive parents. Maybe it's a poor schoolgirl mocked over her attire or without an adult to attend her school performance. Sometimes it's a child abandoned by a cruel stepparent in freezing weather on an isolated road. In a few cases, the child turns out to be the wealthy protagonist's own son or daughter; maybe the ex-spouse was pregnant at the time of divorce. unknown by the father, or the male protagonist's parents disapproved of his pregnant fiancée.

You don't always get storybook endings like the male protagonist falls in love with the child's mother and they live happily ever after. Quite often, there are sad nuances like the child's mother's health condition was too much to overcome.

And then there are like weird science fiction twists like the girl had secret powers, and the powers that be knew that he would pass by the girl at a certain location and pick her up. The weirdest scenario is not one of these, but probably the strangest overall, without resorting to a supernatural context (although it is still an unbelievable context). A professional single woman without children gets a call from a local school, upset that the girl is still there long after classes were finished for the day. She insists they are confused; she has no daughter. They insist they have her signed contact information. They also speak of a dad, an old boyfriend who disappeared from her life sometime back. They threatened to escalate the issue to CPS unless she picked up the girl, so she finally agreed to go there.

So the woman arrives on the scene, and the story gets even weirder. The girl is a mini-me to the point of replicating a childhood scar above her lip and greeting her as if they saw each other over breakfast earlier. [At this point, I start thinking this is a weird amnesia case. Nope.] She gets a DNA test confirming a maternal match; how could she be a mother without giving birth?

I'm not going ging to summarize the whole plot here, but much of it involves tracking down the old boyfriend who has forged her signature on documents; I still don't understand why he is abandoning his daughter (more on that below) and his motive for revealing her to the girlfriend,

Apparently, years back, the couple was in love, but she wanted a career first before motherhood; knowing the biological clock on fertility, they decided to store some of her eggs. For some reason, he seemed dissatisfied with his girlfriend deciding when she was ready to be a mother, so they broke up. He stole the eggs, fertilized them with his sperm, and had one or more implanted in a surrogate he hired.

She eventually tracked him down, and he had broken a lot of laws. By the end of the story, she has decided to gain sole custody and expunge him from their daughter's life; he's desperate to retain visitation rights, denied. I still don't get how or why he trained the girl to live with a mother she never met or why he abandoned her to her egg donor mother. Maybe he decided being a dad was inconvenient, and he didn't trust himself to leave her to the foster system. Maybe I read past relevant clues.

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Post #7527 M: Trump Finally Gets His Nobel Peace Prize; Stossel on Progressive Utopias; McClanahan on A Sickness Eating Away at American Democracy?

 Quote of the Day

It is a miracle 
that curiosity survives 
formal education.
Albert Einstein  

Trump Finally Gets His Nobel Peace Prize

Stossel on Progressive Utopias

McClanahan on A Sickness Eating Away at American Democracy?

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Drew Sheneman via US News

Musical Interlude: 1962 Top 100 Hits

Bobby Rydell - I'll never dance again

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Friday, January 16, 2026

Post #7526 M: This isn't Defense. It's the Constitution Betrayed; Trump Wants Greenland Whether They Like it Or Not; Why 27 U.S. States Are Going Broke

 Quote of the Day

People begin to become successful 
the minute they decide to be.
Harvey Mackay  

This isn't Defense. It's the Constitution Betrayed

Trump Wants Greenland Whether They Like it Or Not

Why 27 U.S. States Are Going Broke

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Phil Hands via US News

Musical Interlude: 1962 Top 100 Hits

Soul Twist - King Curtis

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Thursday, January 15, 2026

Post #7525 Rant of the Day: ICE and the Murder of Renee Good

It is no surprise to any familiar reader that I vehemently disagree with Trump's immigration policies. In part, it was Trump's own hypocritical political exploitation of nativism. Via Google AI:

So did it surprise me recently that he not only rolled out his own self-deportation policy but used taxpayer money to encourage aliens to go home?

Why have I been pro-immigrant? My own great-grandparents (I never met) emigrated from Quebec (both sides) in the late nineteenth century to the Fall River, MA area. At the time, Fall River was a large textile hub; in fact, my maternal grandmother (who died while I was a toddler) was apparently a master weaver before getting married to Grandfather during the Depression. Our Franco-American (French Canadian) culture really focused on our language at home and our Catholic faith: my maternal uncle priest and a paternal aunt sister/nun. Like my grandparents and parents. I, the firstborn of seven, was brought up bilingual, although predominantly French at home. My kindergarten teacher raised an issue with my English, and my folks made a decision to speak English around the growing family. I know my mom, who had gone to girls' Catholic school through high school, had been sensitive to others teasing her accented English, and I don't think she wanted us to go through similar issues.

Through high school and my work history, I lived in or near 3 border cities (Laredo, El Paso, Yuma). I went to a Catholic college located in a southwest barrio of San Antonio; I think some of my dorm friends were sons of migrant farmworkers. My closest friend Ramon was a Latino. Heck, my first date was at a taco stand just off campus (no car). When I went to graduate school at UH, I joined the local Newman Association (Catholic student group) and befriended and/or dated multiple Latinas. (The Latino culture, like my own, prized family, hard work, and a Catholic faith.)

As a professor or IT professional, I've worked with, gone to school, or taught a diverse number of people. One of my officemates as a UH doctoral student, was a Taiwanese woman; there was also a Chinese MBA student. In my first NASA contract (before UH), I worked with a Bangladeshi engineer. I've probably worked dozens of ease Asian Indians, including my former best friend H1B, now a naturalized citizen. I had a Native American IT manager client in one of my first independent gigs. I had, of course, a Mexican student at UTEP who personally hand-delivered his family's graduation party to me (I had already confirmed attending my baby sister's UTSA graduation the same day). At IBM. I remotely worked with cross-national DBAs on a Netherlands corporate project, not to mention Bangalore with off-prime production support. I've worked with practicing Muslims. Hindus, Jews. Protestants. Mormons,etc., I've had women, black, and Indian managers. I've dated women from different countries.

Have I ever met an "illegal"? [I personally consider that term a pejorative and prefer the term "unauthorized alien".] Not that I'm aware of. I've probably met occasional, say maids or landscapers with limited command of English. I remember a sweet, older, polite Latina maid on my way to my hotel room. But for all I know, she was the wife of a naturalized citizen. I don't care about government papers. I've mentioned living in three cities, where I was closer to Mexicans than to the closest other US city or town. We didn't have quotas on other countries of the Hemisphere until 1965 "reform". We have Spartan temporary work programs, and it can take years to enter the country the "legal way". Employers can find the year's quota for H1Bs exhausted within hours, I recall, while I was a UTEP faculty member going to lunch in Juarez with a Latino instructor and others, who did not need a passport. I never had this Gestapo-like obsession with official papers. It didn't bother me if the maid had limited knowledge of English; her job didn't require it. It doesn't bother me whether she's got legal status; she's in a voluntary agreement with the hospitality industry and a contributing member of our economy.

Ironically, the decision of migrants to stay is an artifact of high border security; it was the difficulty of returning to work that drove the need for permanent residency, and permanent residency drove the need for family reunification. That's why when Eisenhower acted to legalize foreign workers, illegal immigration went way down.

The above context is to set up the context for discussing the Ross/Good kerfuffle, in Minnesota. The first time I heard of it, DHS Secretary Noem, a Trumpkin I never really liked, and of course, the head of Trump's resources in charge of immigration regulation, was on a CNN clip, arguing an ICE officer (Jonathan Ross) had been run over by "domestic terrorist" (Renee Good), and responded in "self-defense". 

… here in Minneapolis today. Any loss of life is a tragedy, and I think all of us can agree that in this situation it was preventable. I've spoken to the president today on the situation here on the ground. I also just got off the phone a little while ago with Governor Walz and spoke to him as well.

(00:16)

I want to reiterate first with all of you the facts of what happened today. At 10:25 AM Central Time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement were carrying out lawful operations here in Minneapolis. Because of the adverse weather that Minneapolis has seen and recent snow, one of the vehicles became stuck and ensnared in the snow. Law enforcement were attempting to push out this vehicle when a mob of agitators that were harassing them all day began blocking them in, shouting at them and impeding law enforcement operations.

(00:47)

ICE officers and agents approached the vehicle of the individual in question who was blocking the officers in with her vehicle and she had been stalking and impeding their work all throughout the day. ICE agents repeatedly ordered her to get out of the car and to stop obstructing law enforcement, but she refused to obey their commands. She then proceeded to weaponize her vehicle and she attempted to run a law enforcement officer over. This appears as an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism. The ICE officer fearing for his life and the other officers around him and the safety of the public fired defensive shots. He used his training to save his own life and that of his colleagues. He was treated at a local hospital, has been released and is now with family.

(01:37)

I encourage the American people at this point in time to pray for him, but also, to pray for the deceased's family and her loved ones. Today alone in this country, there have been four different domestic terrorist attacks on federal officers by the ramming of vehicles. Three of them happened here in Minneapolis. We've seen over 100 of these vehicle rammings happen in just recent weeks, and this must stop.

(02:03)

ICE alone is facing a 1,300% increhttps://rguillem.blogspot.com/2026/01/post-7520-social-media-digest.htmlase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats against all of them. In fact, the very same officer who was attacked today had previously been dragged by an anti-ICE rioter who had rammed him with a car and drug him back in June. He sustained injuries at that time as well.

 I was immediately skeptical of Noem's take, especially the assertion of "domestic terrorism," which, as FIRE points out, "Trump’s ‘domestic terrorism’ memo chillingly targets people by ideology. [T]his memo doesn’t focus on actual violence. It includes frequent references to constitutionally protected speech and ideas." 

I am particularly active on X/Twitter, and an alternative scenario quickly emerged. I will not embed all my relevant posts/tweets here, but you should find them reposted in my latest social media digest post, including key photos and videos.

Victim Renee Good via CNN

I will summarize here after reading dozens of news accounts and X posts. As best I can reconstruct, Renee Good, a soccer mom of 3, had just dropped off her 6 yo son at school and was accompanied by wife/widow Becca. outside the SUV while the vehicle was at rest. I believe Good and her wife were part of a neighborhood watch group, protesting ICE's aggressive tactics. I think that the physical whistle-blowing and driving in the area near ICE activities clogging traffic, annoy ICE personnel,

I still don't see a good explanation why ICE was going after Good. I've heard that ICE had a disabled vehicle stuck in the snow, some distance away. I don't know what that had to do with Good after the school drop off. Was she driving by and stalling a vehicle tow? Maybe personnel were stuck in the vehicle and dealayed in going to the target address? As I've tweeted on multiple occasions, even if Good drove past, she wasn't responsible for an act of God causing an ICE resource issue to resolve; if she was blocking traffic, that still wasn't ICE's issue to resolve; it was a local/state issue; Good was not on a federal property. ICE needed to complain, say. to local police. All of this is necessary to justify why ICE had any business to try to detain or arrest. It was a point I raised about the GML recent episode discussing it; I think Chuck said something like "It's just easier to go with the flow, and let ICE charge you. I literally don't know anything more than maybe she drove past the disabled vehicle, and how the hell is that a criminal act?

So the general context on an apparently side 1-way street, maybe about a block away from presumably the ICE vehicle near the T-intersection. Good for unclear reasons has stopped and parked sideways across the street, still leaving a lane of traffic to other vehicles passing. Good is waving them on.

An ICE vehicle stops in the lane Good is blocking a few feet near Good's driver door, and Ross and his partner (I don't think I've seen him identified) exit the vehicle. The partner aggressively approaches Good  and demands she get out of the vehicle, In the meanwhile Ross is circling around the SUV videotaping with his cellphone, as he passes Good's open car window, she clearly says something to the effect that she has no issue with him. (Remember that; it's key to the issue of whether Good attempted to run over Ross.) Becca, who's left the vehicle, as Ross passes her side of the SUV.

So at or near their final positions, before Good seems to try to escape in the direction of traffic to the right. Ross is standing near the left headlight. The right side of his body is clearly visible from the back of the stopped vehicle, I also saw him draw his weapon before the vehicle moved. I also saw a clip (Ross?) of Good furiously turning her steering wheel to the right, away from Ross.

I couldn't tell how far away Ross was from the front of the car, but he was at most a half step away from the rest of his body being left of the car, even if she pulled out straight, never mind to the right. I think that Ross and his partner were aggressively determined to arrest Good and not leave the scene; that's not fact but my inference.

A critical point is that Ross' partner is desperately trying to force his way into Good's driver door. I infer that Good panicked and sought to drive away from the posed danger. She reversed the car and drove to the right. I've seen one angle where the front left tire may have briefly skidded on a patch of ice. Ross shoots to kill with one bullet through the windshield, and he clearly steps to his right and shoots two more shots through Good's side window. 

Did Good's vehicle hit Ross? Not clear; maybe based on one factor I'll soon discuss. It's possible he got bumped or swiped by the front left edge of the vehicle as she turned right with a minor skid of the front left tire. But one thing is clear: he never lost his footing, and he easily walked around after any alleged contact.

I don't believe that Good's murder is morally defensible. I don't see a case, to my knowledge, to use deadly force. They had her vehicle tag and thus her home address; if there was a legitimate federal charge, there was a safer way to do it. DHS and police departments generally realize a dead or injured driver poses a safety risk to pedestrians or other vehicles.

I earlier referenced a possible inference of vehicle contact. That is alleged internal bleeding. Probably Ross' health information is privileged and unavailable. That could mean anything from minor bruising or minor, self-healing vessel leaks to more serious issues that manifest some time later. We don't have the name of the hospital, procedures (e;g., CT Scan), outcomes, etc. We know he was soon discharged, maybe advised to stay off his feet a few days. Another point is I don't know how you tie bleeding to an alleged car bump. For all we know, Ross could have had a fall before or after the Good incident. 

I will end this essay with a point I made on X: I can't believe a soccer mom of 3 was killed over some ICE issue with her SUV. It's not like she was transporting an unauthorized alien. As for Noem, the terrorist accusation is ludicrous; if anything, ICE terrorized Good.

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