Mississippi Burning 😱🤡 ✡️🌻😱🤡

Deny and Lie:  Last week, the Trump administration posted a white washed fake history of the January 6 Capitol attack on an official US government website and during a two hour frequently rambling, very disturbing interview with the NY Times Trump said he regrets not seizing voting machines from swing areas after the 2020 election which he still says he won while also asserting that he won the state of Minnesota three times though he didn’t win it even once.  Therefore, no one should be surprised that Trump and his team, especially ICE Barbie Kristi Noem, are sticking with the assertion that Minneapolis shooting victim Renee Nicole Good was a domestic terrorist who got what she deserved because she should have known better than to question ICE’s activities.  Dolled up a little less than usual, Noem who was sent on the Sunday Morning news circuit to clean up her mess, lied her way through an unusually probing interview by CNN’s Jake Tapper.  She kept on insisting that video evidence proved that her ICE guys, most specifically shooter Jonathan Ross, acted appropriately, that he had no choice but to repeatedly shoot at Good, and then to deprive her of medical care, to avoid being mowed down by her car and then attacked by her zombie ghost? Oddly enough, one of those videos, taken by Ross while he was shooting Good, was provided by ICE.  Despite Noem’s assertion, that video doesn’t exonerate Ross, if anything it bolsters the argument that Good was unnecessarily gunned down, it certainly doesn’t help that one male agent, likely Ross, is heard calling her a fxcking bitch. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal summarized the results of their investigation into ICE’s vehicle related shootings. They noted that the Minnesota ICE shooting is one of 13 incidents where federal immigration agents have used deadly force against civilians in vehicles since July. They wrote that though traffic stops by police are common, “decades of research have produced widely accepted standards for conducting them safely and effectively.” However, since until now federal immigration officials haven’t regularly conduct traffic stops, they haven’t received much in the way of training in how to do them safely. Kristi Noem knows that, or at the very least ought to know that her agents are inadequately trained for what they’re doing and that, if anything, their actions were escalatory. That said, based on the smirk that formed on her face towards the end of her Tapper interview, it’s clear that she doesn’t care. To summarize, the official government position is that the unarmed Good who had just dropped one of her three children off at school and was transporting stuffed animals was a domestic terrorist deserving of the death penalty.  Those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, jeopardizing the lives of real police officers, the Vice President, and members of Congress, they were just unfairly prosecuted innocent tourists. And Trump won in 2020, and if stealing a few voting machines is what it will take for Republicans to win in the midterms, so be it.  

Legal Games:  Last night the DOJ revealed that they have subpoenaed Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s records, part of an effort to indict him for “lying” about the multibillion dollar plus renovation of the Federal Reserve complex during his testimony to Congress.  The renovation is very expensive, but then again, the building is almost 100 years old, needs lots of work including asbestos abatement, not that Trump believes in asbestos abatement, and it’s not like Trump whose East wing ball room keeps getting more and more expensive and who is spending $1 billion on his “free” plane has ever brought one of his boondoggle projects in on budget. Ironically, Trump who spent part of his Christmas holiday shopping for marble handrests for the Kennedy Arts Center, who keeps adding gold plaques to the White House, and who is spending $2 billion on the renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of War is going after the Fed for fixing its chipped marble columns and for a project that seeks to keep the Fed complex true to the architectural style Trump purports to like.  It’s fairly obvious that Trump could care less about the project’s costs but is going after Powell because he’s pissed that Powell, who he initially appointed as Chair, hasn’t zeroed out interest rates.  Last night Powell took the unusual step of circulating a video in which he confirmed that he was being investigated while denying any impropriety.  He said that he will continue to do his job without fear or favor despite Trump’s intimidation tactics. Powell’s term as Fed Chair ends in May, his term as a Federal Governor runs through January 2028. In other legal news, Lindsey Halligan who is still pretending to be the US Attorney for Eastern Virginia has been called on the carpet by a federal Judge who wants her to explain why she keeps lying about being a US Attorney and a federal judge in NY has invalidated subpoenas signed by upstate “US Attorney” John Sarcone, because he like Halligan has never been confirmed.     

Economic Desperation:  Trump’s efforts to oust Powell early and his frenetic push for lower interest rates are just one of the many signs that despite his assertion that the economy is the best ever, it’s not, except for the richest among us. Despite his efforts at statistical obfuscation, Trump’s been unable to hide that hiring is way down, probably significantly lower than the anemic numbers released last week. He’s now throwing lots of things at the wall via executive announcement hoping that one or more of them will improve the economy and make housing more affordable. He’s ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to immediately buy up $200 billion in mortgages, he’s attempting to limit institutional purchases of foreclosed houses, and he’s trying to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for a year.  Ironically, some of these policies have long been on the Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders wish list and were proposed by Kamala Harris. Moreover, as appealing as they sound to the layman, it’s not clear that they’ll help the average Joe or Jane be able to buy a house because there’s a shortage of affordable housing.  We need to build our way out of the housing crisis.  It doesn’t help that building materials have gotten more expensive due to Trump’s tariffs and that there’s a shortage of labor due in part to Trump’s deportation policies. Additionally, housing agencies buying up mortgages is one of those things that led to the 2008 mortgage crisis.  Furthermore, absent more supply, lower interest rates will increase competition for homes, raising prices and many beneficiaries of lower interest rates will be those refinancing their existing mortgage loans rather than new buyers.  Housing policy, like health care, is complicated.  

Fog:  It turns out that Nobel Peace prizes are not transferable so last year’s winner, Venezuela’s Maria Cortina Machado, can’t give hers to Trump.  That’s a problem because she planned to give him her prize to convince him to let her run the country that he’s now running mostly because he wants control of its oil resources. As to those oil resources, Trump’s Friday meeting with oil company executives didn’t go as planned because most of them have been burned by their previous investment in Venezuela and have little interest in spending billions there again. It doesn’t help that the kind of investment needed makes little sense given current oil prices.  In other news, Trump has ramped up his rhetoric against Greenland, repeatedly threatening to grab it away from NATO ally Denmark even though that would likely destroy NATO and is totally unnecessary since by treaty, the US already has the right to do a lot of the things Trump wants to do in Greenland.  Things aren’t going well in Iran, lots of people demonstrating and lots of people killed or jailed.  Peace guy Trump, who bombed ISIS targets in Syria over the weekend, is threatening the mullahs calling them out for their brutal treatment of dissenters. They deserve to be called out, but Trump seeking the moral high ground is kind of ironic.  Similarly, while he continues to assert his right to Venezuela and a few other places, like Greenland and Cuba, he told the NY Times that China won’t grab Taiwan and Putin won’t go after more of Ukraine and the rest of eastern Europe while he’s president because they “respect” him as opposed to Biden who he is still blaming for everything.  And last week by executive order Trump withdrew the US from 66 international organizations, agencies, and commissions.  Remember when his Trump One withdrawal from the Paris accords caused lots of outrage? This action seemed to just slip by among all the other insanity. 

Very Bad 💩: The only synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi suffered severe fire damage this weekend as a result of an arson attack. The arsonist has been caught but we still don’t know much about him. Sadly, this wasn’t the first time this synagogue was set on fire. It was burned down by the KKK for aligning with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Speaking of anti-Semites, Trump told the NY Times that “we (MAGA) don’t like them.”  He blames Kanye West for anti-Semite Nick Fuentes, who he of course denies knowing, attending a Mar a Lago dinner and has no explanation for his administration’s decision to appoint Hitler fan Paul Ingrassia as Acting General Counsel of the GSA after his Hitler affinity made it impossible for him to get a Senate confirmation for another senior position. Tucker Carlson, the winner of the Anti Semite of the Year award for 2025 was a guest at the White House this week and VP Vance says he doesn’t want to kick anyone, anti-Semites included, out of the Republican tent.  On the left, unlike most NY politicians, Mayor Mamdani, failed to issue an official or timely statement condemning the “we support Hamas” crowd that chanted outside of a Queens, NY synagogue.  He finally said something in passing when asked by a reporter for a comment.  The both-sides problem is growing.