It’s Friday, January 23, 2026. Eight more days, and 2026’s first month is done.
Ashland’s weather is again blue sky, sunshine, and 36 to 46 degrees F, with stagnant air. I guess the weather isn’t into changing much around here.
Reading of the advance of that big winter storm smothering the eastern U.S., I’m happy with my weather today. Snow, ice, freezing rain, sleet, and record cold temperatures are aligned to strike. All of you in that weather’s path, take care and hang on.
Tell me you don’t know the difference between weather and climate without telling me
It’s sad that people like Donald Trump don’t understand the difference between weather and climate. I don’t think it’s a failure of education as much as it’s lazy thinking. As they say, weather is your mood today; climate is your personality.
I’d like to insert a courtesy reminder that today is a Day of Truth and Justice. This is to remind us that an ICE agent killed a person, Renee Good, earlier this month. Since then, ICE has increased its presence and violence in Minnesota.
While official-sounding reasons about immigration sweeps are announced, the primary reason seems to be retaliation. That explanation fits with the pattern to date under Trump 47. Minnesota is blue and Donald Trump is levying vengeance on any state that he didn’t carry, in much the same way that he’s trying to bully other nations to do whatever he thinks is best.
To counter Trump’s tactics and strategy, a general boycott to support Minnesota and those suffering from ICE’s attacks on Americans is in effect today, January 23, 2026. If you care, don’t buy, please.
For me, that means staying at home to write and not spending any money for anything past what’s already committed for health, safety, and security, such as electricity and water.
The Neurons inserted a song by The Smiths in the morning mental music stream, “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”. The trigger for the song’s recall was, “Why do I give valuable time to people who don’t care if I live or die?”
I believe it’s a general reflection that many of us are trying to improve everyone’s life. That includes some people who don’t care about others living or dying. Some even have expressed it online with lines like, “Die Liberal Scum”. It’s enough to make you wonder, as The Smiths did.
My hope for you today is that you’re safe, healthy, and warm. Happy would be nice, too, if it can be managed. For now, I’ll accept coffee. Cheers
Protests against ICE swept across the United States last weekend. Many citizens filled the streets and lined sidewalks to protest ICE’s policies and deployments.
Those ICE policies and deployments led to escalated violence. The most shocking violence occurred when ICE agent Ross killed Renee Nicole Good, unarmed and in her car, in Minneapolis a few days into 2026.
This week, another report emerges of ICE agents threatening U.S. citizens. This is the story of Pastor Kenny Callaghan of Minnesota.
White and gay, Pastor Callaghan was standing with protestors a few days ago when an ICE agent confronted him. Pastor Callaghan told his story to news reporters.
Rev. Kenny Callaghan is the senior pastor at All God’s Children Metropolitan Community Church in Minneapolis. He was driving to work on the morning of Jan. 7 when he saw a large crowd on Portland Avenue.
Callaghan said he parked his car and walked three blocks toward the crowd and saw several ICE agents. At the time, Callaghan didn’t know why agents were there, but saw agents approach a Hispanic woman, so he went to stand beside her.
He heard her tell agents she wasn’t afraid of them. Then, he said there was a wave of energy. It was the news of Renee Good’s death.
“I welled up in energy, even more energy than I had, and I said at that time toward those ICE agents approaching this young Hispanic woman, ‘take me, take me instead of her, I am not afraid of you either’,” he said.
Callaghan said an ICE agent approached him and asked him to repeat what he said.
“I said I am not afraid and then they pointed a gun in my face, and the crowd was chanting louder and louder, they were also chanting at this time, ‘we are not afraid, we are not afraid.’ ICE put handcuffs on my hands and put me in a black SUV,” Callaghan said.
He said while he was handcuffed in the car, ICE agents approached him a few times, asking if he was scared, and he repeatedly said no. Callaghan said ICE agents then asked him for his ID and cellphone. He asked if he was being arrested, and then he said ICE slammed the door and walked away.
“A few moments later, they came back and they said, ‘Are you afraid yet?’ and I said ‘no,’ and then they said it ‘Well, you’re White. You wouldn’t be fun anyway.’ And then I was shocked because if I hadn’t seen enough, it was then that I knew that this staging that these ICE raids are really about fear and intimidation,” he said.
Many observers agree that Pastor Callaghan is right. Trump’s ICE policies aren’t about making America great again, immigrants, whether they’re illegal or not. ICE’s tactics are about threatening Americans to do as they say, or else.
For many of us, Trump’s ICE policies aren’t a surprise. Reports from Defense Secretary Esper emerged that Trump asked about shooting protestors in Trump’s first term. During that same period, Trump also suggested invoking the Insurrection Act as justification to send tens of thousands of soldiers to deal with protestors.
Since taking office in 2025, Trump increased ICE’s budget and role. He sent ICE agents into cities on missions to round up illegal immigrants but also sent National Guard units into multiple U.S. cities. Established in 2003, ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Under Trump, the agency is now violently confronting U.S. citizens far from our borders. The people they’re stopping are not immigrants and ICE agents often do not identify themselves.
The number of measles cases in the U.S. are on the rise.
No, that is not ‘good news’.
It is vindication.
The data clearly shows that the measles vaccinations policies followed in the U.S. for the last several decades were working. The science was understood.
Now, led by a charlatan in Health and Human Services, one Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and emboldened by the Trump Regime, the U.S. has had over 1900 cases reported in 2025. With winter striking and people keeping closer proximity, measles outbreaks in several states are growing. It’s doubtful to me that the TACO Regime will take action to address these outbreaks. The outbreaks are part of the Project 2025 strategy to undermine health and morale in the United States. While it’s not explicitly stated as such, that is the intention which emerges.
In late 2022, Donald Trumpfiled a defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board, which, he claimed, defamed him by refusing to retract prizes it gave the New York Times and the Washington Post for their Russiagate reporting.
Trump, in the lawsuit, alleged that the Times and the Post defamed him in their articles and that the Pulitzer Prize Board, by awarding them, defamed him as well. Many Trump critics attacked the lawsuit as frivolous, pointing out that the Pulitzer Prize Board itself didn’t write the articles he claimed were defamatory.
~snip~
Recent articles reveal that the Pultizer folks reacted by demanding records from Trump to prove what he’s claiming.
As of Thursday, the case had reached the discovery phase, with the Pulitzer board submitting a 12-page filing with a “litany of broad discovery demands” for Trump’s legal team. In addition to demanding more typical documents pertaining to Trump’s various lawsuits and claims about the political impact of the Pulitzer Prizes, the board also requested a wide range of documents detailing much more personal and intimate details.
This includes “all” of the president’s tax returns dating from 2015 to now, so as to show any potential financial harm caused by the Pulitzer board’s actions. It also requested health records and prescription histories to demonstrate proof of Trump’s claims of mental and physical anguish.
“To the extent You seek damages for any physical ailment or mental or emotional injury arising from Counts I-IV of Your Complaint, all Documents (whether held by You or by third parties under Your control or who could produce them at your direction) concerning Your medical and/or psychological health from January 1, 2015, to present, including any prescription medications you have been prescribed or have taken,” the filing explained. “For the avoidance of doubt, this includes all Documents Concerning Your annual physical examination. To the extent you do not seek such damages in this action, please confirm so in writing.”
~snip~
One, I’m very pleased that the Pulitzer Prize Board is pushing back and not capitulating, the path which so many universities and media organizations followed. Two, I love that response: this is what you’re claiming, so show us the receipts.
Of interest now is how the TACO Regime will react. I expect bluster, of course. Claims of executive privilege will probably spring up as well. TACO never likes revealing paperwork because the paperwork inevitably reveals the depths of his deceit and lies.
Trump showed again he’s an empty shell of a human.
President Donald Trump responded to the mass shooting over the weekend at Brown University, telling a crowd gathered at the White House that “things can happen” while offering “deepest regards” to the families of students who died and urging a speedy recovery for the injured.
~snip~
I couldn’t find any statements that Trump made about the disastrous flooding in Washington. Sure, the Trump Regime signed off on assistance but he, personally, said nothing about the disaster. No, he’s too busy slamming Rob Reiner after the actor and his wife were murdered by their son.
Trump, in a post on his social media network, said Reiner and his wife were killed “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”
He said Reiner “was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness.”
Employers across the U.S. added 64,000 jobs in November, beating economists’ forecasts, new government data shows, even as new October figures revealed a loss of 105,000 jobs, a sign the labor market remains under pressure.
The unemployment rate in November rose to 4.6%, the highest level since September 2021.
~snip~
Trump will blame President Biden for the rising unemployment. That’s a given, even though it’s been Trump’s economy since the 2025’s first month. Trump might even blame President Obama for this poor unemployment, because that’s how loosely connected to reality Dopy Donny is these days. The wires between his brain and reality are frayed and broken, and it is showing in his speeches and reactions. He’s quicker to jump to hostility and bullying than in previous years. Those attacks are often not landing as they have in previous years.
Sadly for Trump, at the same time that reports claim the nation added more jobs in November, ‘beating economists forecasts’, October figures were revised, showing it was worse than originally claimed. The job numbers were also revised downward for August and September.
Man, talk about a bad trend. Tsk, tsk.
Wonder if Vegas is putting up odds that the November jobs numbers will be revised downward in January?
Today is Munda, December 15, 2025. Sixteen days remain in 2025. It’ll be a memorable year for historians.
Clouds capped Ashlandia’s sky. Rain is s’posed to be headin’ our way. 38 degrees F now, we may see fifty.
Peace and grace took more hits this weekend. Murderers struck in Australia and Brown University. There were absolutely more murders and shootings than these two this weekend. These two were the ones which seized attention because of their planned cruelty. They seem like an extension of the mindset which put DJ Trump into the building formerly known as the White House for a second term. Part of a sad world where war and killing equals peace and justice. Same as it ever was, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
Then we came to the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife. Stabbed to death by their son. That kind of news bankrupts my soul, especially on top of the shootings.
Today’s music is a Velvet Underground offering called, “What Goes On”. I didn’t know of it when it first came out in ’68. Learned of it a few years later. Just fascinated me. It was the beat, the guitar, the organ, the drum, the lyrics and vocals. “One minute born, one minute doomed. One minute up, one minute down. What goes on in your mind?”
Today’s presence in the morning mental music stream was jogged when I questioned the poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, later known as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”. We heard it recited with some humorous music accompaniment at a holiday concert yesterday. St. Nick was covered with soot coming down the chimney. I commented that he must have been filthy by the night’s end. My wife said, “No, he’d be cleaned by Christmas magic.” Which lead to my observation that Christmas Magic would be a good name for a dry-cleaning service. Which precipitated the wonder, “What goes on in your mind.”
Musing around dream gyrations and yesterday and other things, the comment returned to me. The Neurons caught it and the song came on.
Stay warm and safe, wherever you are. Hope peace and grace do a quick cameo for the cameras. Coffee has me going again. Oh, it’s raining, first precipitation of December. And off we go. Cheers
See, a friend has an old computer that often fails him on the net. He sent an email to me asking for a favor. Sounded like him so I did it. Bought an Apple Gift Card for him to send to a friend for their birthday.
Was his email address. ‘Sounded’ just like him.
Wasn’t.
His email address was likely spoofed. Maybe hacked. There was enough of him and his style available to analyze and mimic his writing style.
I’m just too damn gullible. Along with several of my friends.
Time to crank up another Wenzda. December 10, 2025 in Ashlandia began with sunshine and blue skies. I blinked and suddenly fog is smashing its gray face against the window panes. 45 F now, a jump the high fifties has been projected.
Today’s music is torn straight from the headlines. Not really. It’s more of a reflection on the many people experiencing cruelty and heartlessness under the Trump Regime. When this song was released in 1973, it was a protest against police violence and a police murder of a young Black boy in NYC. Now, “Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” by the Rolling Stones was brought up by Der Neurons to the morning mental music stream in response to general news as ICE heartlessly chases and attacks people on behalf of Trump’s growing intention to make the United States whiter.
I’d like to tear that Trump world apart. I think there’s growing number of people with that same sentiment.
Alright, coffee jumpstarted the brain and various other organs. Hope peace and grace come give you a big hug. Here we go, world, another rotation. Cheers
We are so polarized in the United States in the second decade of the 2000s.
Yeah, that’s not news.
Last election for the POTUS in 2024, we had those on the right screaming about President Biden’s sleeping. They declared him feeble. ‘They’, egged on by Donald Trump and JD Vance, raged about President Biden’s enfeebled state. In their eyes, he was too old, too tired. And who should replace that enfeebled, tired president, the one called Sleepy Joe by Donald J Trump?
Why Donald J. Trump, of course! A year younger but so much more energetic, they declared. Despite his haggard appearance. Despite the photos of him sleeping at his trial in 2024.
Trump is what we need, they cried. Despite his felony convictions. Despite his business failures. He tells it like it is! Despite his well-documented lies. Despite his hatred, and his use of slurs against people, especially women and the handicapped. Despite his three marriages and payments to a woman for sex.
They thought Trump would lower prices through tariffs. Reduce inflation! Bring back jobs! Increase the prestige, success, and conditions in the United States.
The rest of us thought this weird. Trump had already been POTUS. He’d not accomplished anything he promised. His biggest broken promises were not building the wall that Mexico would pay for. He’d been twice impeached. He instigated insurrection against the United States and tried to overturn the election results when he lost.
Trump didn’t replace the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare, he mocked it — as he promised. Trump never even rolled out a concept in four years plus.
Trump said he would ‘never golf’ or ‘take vacation’ because he’d be too busy working for the nation. Trump has since golfed more than any POTUS. He’s golfed about 25% of his time in office in 2025.
And Trump, Trump, is the only POTUS to have the government shutdown three times. His third government shutdown, the Trump Epstein Shutdown of 2025, is the longest on record.
Now Trump has established new records. Through Trump’s orders, 80 people, strangers to the United States, as we rarely know their names, or their records, or any evidence against them, have been murdered in international waters, a violation of U.S. and international law.
Through Trump, U.S. citizens are being turned against one another through his deployment of unneeded national guard and military units. He offers flimsy excuses and reasons, declaring that the places where he’s deploying them are burning, when there is no evidence at all of these things happening.
Through Trump, tourism and travel to the United States is cratering. Through Trump, prices are rising and affordability is falling.
Trump makes money on being POTUS. He pushes products with his name on them, like his Bible, his gold shoes, his gold cell phone. He’s destroying the White House, having it torn down, over the objections of We the People.
And weirdly, weirdly, through all of this, some part of the United States population declares that Trump represents the best of us.
The rest of us recoil in horror. We think Trump represents the worst of us.
Trump’s greed is not the best of the United States. His failed businesses are not the best of the United States. His lies, womanizing, and cheating are not the best of the United States. His lawlessness and childish mocking of other people are not the best of the United States. His ranting on Truth Social is not the best of the United States. His wanton disappearing people based on the color of their skin or their accents, without any due process, is not the best of the United States. His killing of citizens from other nations without due process is not the best of the United States. His persecution of political opponents is not the best of the United States. Nor is his greed, avarice, and shallow thinking the best of the United States.
Twisted and polarized. This is what we are. The real question for us is, where do we go from here, in 2025, as we near the end of just the first year of Trump’s second term?
Many of us are holding our breath as 2026 approaches. Because we do not know what Trump will do next. And given his lawlessness and the way he’s breaking our nation, chances are, whatever he does, it will not be good for anyone except Donald J. Trump.
Michael Seidel, writer 