Idaho’s state legislature wants to ask SCOTUS to overturn Obergefell, i.e. the same-sex marriage decision. They’re doing this in the form of a petition, which is unusual and unlikely to succeed, but I’m thinking this is the velociraptors testing the electric fence. They’ll be brushed back, and then try again. Or another state will get the idea. And I expect we’ll see the corrupt SCOTUS roll back this protection. Places like Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York will retain the right, but red-state shitholes like Alabama, Louisiana, even Indiana? I doubt it. And so a lesbian couple that travels from their home in Grand Rapids to, say, the bluegrass festival in Brown County, Indiana should take care not to get into a traffic accident, because they wouldn’t be each other’s next of kin if something bad happened.
This situation is why we have federalism, of course. It’s preposterous to think you can be married in one state and single in another, but that’s the way MAGAts want it, and I guess that’s how they’ll get it.
Also, the president casually suggested ethnically cleansing Gaza over the weekend. I hope the Arab Americans in Dearborn and Hamtramck who simply couldn’t vote for the party of Genocide Joe will enjoy this outcome. We’re also tariff-beefing with…checks notes…Colombia?
In other news at this hour, all the Great Lakes freighters are heading to their winter layup ports, about a week late. One had to be broken out of the ice in Lake Erie near Buffalo. It’s not exactly Shackleton’s Endurance, but good lord, we knew this weather was coming at least a week ahead of its arrival.
And that’s all I have energy for today.
Alan Stamm said on January 26, 2025 at 5:43 pm
You’ve still got game, Derringer. I salute this is the velociraptors testing the electric fence.
Deftly done, Nance.
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Brandon said on January 26, 2025 at 7:54 pm
Seventy-nine degrees here.
Any thoughts on the Oscars nominations?
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Deborah said on January 26, 2025 at 8:07 pm
45°, sunny and no wind in Abiquiu, NM today. I finished my patio project and even sat out on it in the sun for a bit.
The Colombia spat is funny. The war on breakfast is even funnier.
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annie said on January 26, 2025 at 8:46 pm
here in southern california, it’s been in the low to mid 70’s, sunny & no rain for weeks & weeks. be careful what you wish for.
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Dorothy said on January 26, 2025 at 9:22 pm
It’s going to be 51 the last day of January! All the dirty snow and ice should be gone by then. It’s going to be a steady and slow melt all week.
My hubby tells me a letter on White House stationary spelled the country’s name as Columbia instead of Colombia. And it’s barely a week since he moved back there. Sigh.
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David C said on January 27, 2025 at 6:15 am
Jr.’s Colombian marching powder is exempt from tariffs, I’m sure.
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Jeff Gill said on January 27, 2025 at 9:05 am
Ah, reminding me of the audience call-backs: “What’s your favorite color? And what’s your favorite district?”
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Jeff Borden said on January 27, 2025 at 9:22 am
This is the reality TV show “presidency.” Tom Homan and a bunch of ICE goons were in Chicago doing “targeted raids” last night and guess who was streaming it? Why, Dr. Phil, the creation of one Oprah Winfrey. (Her other discovery was Dr. Oz, suggesting Oprah is a shitty judge of character.) No word yet on numbers or alleged crimes by the immigrants, but the Chicago Sun-Times reports Dr. Phil told his audience these were dangerous raids. So dangerous a TV hack was invited along.
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Little Bird said on January 27, 2025 at 9:36 am
Speaking of testing that electric fence, Ogles out of Tennessee wants to change the 22 amendment so the orange pustule could run for a third term.
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David C said on January 27, 2025 at 9:53 am
The 27th Amendment took 202 years to ratify. The 26th took 18 year olds being killed in Vietnam without being able to vote. They’re not going to get two thirds of both houses and three quarters of the states to ratify an amendment to allow him another term.
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Jeff Borden said on January 27, 2025 at 10:10 am
I seriously doubt this sack of calcified chicken fat will make it through the current term. He’s seriously overweight, lazy and lives on fast food and up to a dozen Diet Cokes per day.
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robert said on January 27, 2025 at 10:14 am
re: Oprah – she owes all of us an apology – she also helped promote Shady Vance’s book.
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Mark P said on January 27, 2025 at 10:21 am
What will the corrupt, lying, political hacks in the Supreme Court do about the full faith and credit that the states are constitutionally obligated to give acts of other states? I’m sure they will find a good, originalist way to construe it to not mean what it means. After all, today the constitution is a blunt object to be used as a weapon.
You know, it’s pretty amazing to be around to witness the final days of the American experiment. And it’s pretty amazing how quickly it happened. I wonder what this country will look like in 20 or 25 years. In less than one lifetime we went from “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” to “let’s see how many people we can hurt, and how badly we can hurt them.”
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Scout said on January 27, 2025 at 11:32 am
Yep. As we’ve been saying to all the people telling us our marriage won’t be overturned, yeah sure, and Roe was settled law too.
My wife was born in Colombia. She is traveling to the Colombian consulate in LA next month to inquire about applying for dual citizenship, just in case. Our marriage will be legal there.
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Mark P said on January 27, 2025 at 11:37 am
Scout, we can hope it won’t be necessary, and we can hope that Colombia shows more empathy than the U.S. government. It will be interesting to see which is the more Christian nation.
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Jeff Borden said on January 27, 2025 at 12:40 pm
There are several gay couples married in our neighborhood including a couple if teachers who adopted two kids. I prefer their company to any MAGAts, which are blissfully rare in our area.
The morons who voted for the felonious rapist thinking he’d improve the economy better get a second job. Every fucking thing he’s doing is going to cost us all, but especially his true believers. Saps.
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Jakash said on January 27, 2025 at 1:39 pm
Yesterday, Neil Steinberg’s blog post celebrated the 30th anniversary of his first “Bobwatch” column for the Chicago Reader. Via which he would blast Greene for his journalistic deficiencies. Given the proprietress’ history of eviscerating Bob Greene and Mitch Albom, herself, I thought this opening might be particularly apropos here:
“Those who sincerely admire and respect Bob Greene – who read his columns aloud to entertain their dozens of cats, perhaps – should leave the room now. We don’t want to upset them. That leaves those of us who can rationalize his existence only by inverting the normal expectations of readership – instead of excoriating his faults, savoring them. We pick up his column with a tingle of anticipation – how awful will it be?”
Linking to it here for those who might be interested in a bit of the backstory:
https://www.everygoddamnday.com/2025/01/flashback-1995-bob-watch-debuts.html
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Sherri said on January 27, 2025 at 2:43 pm
I’ve had my laughs making fun of the War on Breakfast, but what’s not funny is that Trump has essentially shut down federal scientific research, or “paused” the NIH and NSF. The NIH can’t even order supplies for ongoing research projects without approval. Researchers can’t schedule travel, can’t communicate externally. Grant proposal reviews have been cancelled.
I don’t know why Trump wants to cede science to China, but that seems to be what he’s trying to do.
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Brandon said on January 27, 2025 at 2:44 pm
About the Oscars nominations, the snub of Marianne Jean-Baptiste in the Best Actress category is perhaps the most glaring.
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Dexter Friend said on January 27, 2025 at 3:34 pm
Yeah, that social tea between Joe and Drumph didn’t have either tea, coffee, or Diet Coke …or even water. Drumph neither imbibes tea or coffee, and damned if Joe was serving him Diet Coke. So the tea was just a walk-through I guess.
Remember, Drumph wants to colonize Korean shorelines with the blessing from Un, his pen-pal-love interest. Now Jared K wants to establish resorts in Gaza.
Will FAAFO Trump-power succeed? Someone has to stand up to his nonsense.
Can he live until election day 2028? I think not. Too fat.
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David C said on January 27, 2025 at 3:43 pm
How long until there is a brain drain of US scientists to the EU? Not very.
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Sherri said on January 27, 2025 at 5:49 pm
Science in the US benefited greatly from the brain drain out of Europe as Hitler came to power.
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Julie Robinson said on January 27, 2025 at 8:05 pm
We are losing more friends to the MAGA. Their daughter recently transitioned and was accepted to Trinity College, Dublin. She’s not planning on returning to this country, and certainly not to Florida, and they have decided to leave too. They’re going on retiree visas and applying for citizenship, which they feel is guaranteed since his mom is Irish. So they are getting the heck out.
Some other friends are moving to Cupertino after he got a job at Apple, but not for remote work. The company he’s working for now–stop me if you’ve heard this one–got sold and then went down the toilet. He couldn’t find a comparable job here, and while we’re happy to inherit their plants, we’d rather have them.
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alex said on January 28, 2025 at 12:52 am
Just made a big batch of gumbo and I’m killing time while it cools off enough to put into containers to refrigerate. It’s a new recipe I discovered called “green gumbo,” and it’s full of leafy greens instead of processed meats and I actually like it better this way. I tried it for the first time last week and couldn’t wait to make it again, it was that good.
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SusanG said on January 28, 2025 at 8:11 am
In 2017, I was diagnosed with 4th stage non-Hodgins lymphoma, the same disease that killed Jackie Kennedy Onassis. What happened in the 20-some years? NIH grants that provided effective treatments for devastating diseases. “Disrupting” medical research costs lives. What’s the motivation? Petty vindictiveness…
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Jeff Borden said on January 28, 2025 at 9:03 am
MAGAts are all about the past. They are terrified by the future. They’ve found the perfect vessel for their cowardice in tRump, who is nothing without the fear and loathing he shares with his cult. So, we’ll cede electric propulsion to China and Europe. We’ll cripple medical advances and inventions. We’ll send the best and brighter minds from around the world fleeing to more enlightened countries. Can using leeches, bleeding and poultices as cures be that far away?
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Suzanne said on January 28, 2025 at 9:13 am
Next month, I will hit the 3 year mark of being diagnosed with aggressive leukemia. That I am still alive is a testament to the power of medical science. The MAGA crowd is fine with Trump unilaterally suspending research grant money and this makes me incoherently angry. It’s likely a death sentence for people like me.
Pro-life my ass.
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Jeff Borden said on January 28, 2025 at 9:42 am
More nightmare fuel as the most ignorant buffoon ever elected installs Brain Worm Bobby to lead our health care efforts: There’s a large and growing outbreak of tuberculosis in Kansas.
Suzanne, keep fighting! With luck, we’ll get some relief in the 2026 midterms as Lumpy and his billionaire bros strip mine America to the detriment of those not in the .01%. Maybe some of his cult members will awake to reality.
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alex said on January 28, 2025 at 10:01 am
A clown on the world stage and he’s not exactly bringing comic relief. The dustup in Colombia was nothing but a bunch of capricious ego-driven saber-rattling. Under Biden, Colombia was accepting planeloads of deportees twice weekly on commercial and charter flights, but it wasn’t prepared to receive them unannounced and on military aircraft, which needs prior authorization to land on foreign soil except in an emergency. So it’s Trump’s fuckup, and rather than admit it, he’s going to start a trade war that will hurt American farmers who depend heavily on Colombia as a consumer of goods.
Of course, hardly any of this percolates down to consumers of news. Even I, a news junkie, didn’t get the gist of the whole thing without reading Heather Cox-Richardson. And this is but one of many fires the clown has ignited in his first week in office.
Let’s hope the wheels come off the clown car before it picks up any more speed.
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Jenine said on January 28, 2025 at 10:46 am
@Alex, Green Gumbo sounds wonderful. Apparently there’s also a tradition of adding another leafy green for each friend you want to find in the next year. Per this page: Simply Recipes Green Gumbo.
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tajalli said on January 28, 2025 at 12:01 pm
Alex and Jenine – thanks for the recipe suggestion, it sounds great. Think I’ll use Louisiana hot links, in the creative adjustment spirit of this recipe.
Real smart move, taking away funding for science and medicine. Turn the attention of those massively curious, problem-solving oriented folks toward the antics of the bad political actors. Stroke of genius. Unloose the Krakens!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken
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Jeff Borden said on January 28, 2025 at 12:24 pm
MAGAts don’t want to be governed. They want to be ruled. A sizable number of red hats would’ve been Tories in the 18th century, casting their lot with King George III and his red coats.
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Sherri said on January 28, 2025 at 1:44 pm
Now Trump is freezing all Federal grants, except some, but nobody knows exactly which ones. Aid to individuals is supposedly not frozen, like Social Security and Medicare, but nobody knows exactly about things like Medicaid which are grants to states. My daughter works for an agency which administers LIHEAP money, which is aid for low-income people to pay their energy bills. That money doesn’t go directly to individuals.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/27/white-house-pauses-federal-grants/
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Jeff Gill said on January 28, 2025 at 2:27 pm
Our transitional housing agency, which is largely funded with HUD grants, had quite the board meeting this morning. We’re like Medicaid: Leavitt et alia are saying “no, it doesn’t mean them” but the e-funds draw portal is “down for maintenance.” Yes, this happens occasionally, but I’m not in the mood for coincidence this bright and inauspicious January day.
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Sherri said on January 28, 2025 at 4:16 pm
The chaos is intentional.
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Sherri said on January 28, 2025 at 4:36 pm
OMB has now issued a memo that indicates that Medicaid isn’t supposed to be frozen. Yet the portal that states use to access Medicaid funds was unavailable.
They issue broad, ill-formed orders, in the context of an environment of encouraging snitching on fellow employees, then say, oh no, we didn’t mean that.
Project 2025 has been working a long time to prepare all this shit. They could have prepared Executive Orders that were at least plausibly Constitutional and targeted. But if your goal is to drive out everyone who works for the federal government and destroy the federal government, you do it like this: sabotage.
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tajalli said on January 28, 2025 at 4:55 pm
I have worked for the Census Bureau both for decennial censuses and annual topically focused data collection projects. This past fall I was solicited to apply for a field supervisor position, a temporary mixed tour arrangement. In light of the promised chaos after the election, I did not apply and, although I have a government account, have deliberately not filled out any of the profile info beyond the basic citizenship qualifications. No job history, skills, references. Since all the annual jobs are temporary, it’s likely no one is being hired anyhow.
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Jeff Borden said on January 28, 2025 at 5:37 pm
A federal judge has temporarily halted the freeze. Temporarily is the key word. This action totally usurps the Congress, which approved all these funds. tRump is doing precisely what he promised..being a dictator.
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Sherri said on January 28, 2025 at 5:39 pm
It’s truly astounding. Trump has already committed any number of impeachable acts, but as we know, the GOP had their chance to hold him accountable for anything, and passed. So they’re either going to happily join right in on the destruction, or they’re going to keep their heads down and say nothing, as Trump undoes every vestige of constitutional separation of powers and dares SCOTUS to stop him.
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Jeff Gill said on January 28, 2025 at 6:24 pm
In the spirit of Nancy’s metaphor about the velociraptors testing the fence: will the Trump admin un-freeze the funds pending the Monday hearing, or keep them frozen, to see what the response is?
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Sherri said on January 28, 2025 at 6:55 pm
A friend of mine is an immigration lawyer. Last week her organization received a stop work order from the administration. There are some federal programs that provide some legal aid to immigrants in immigration court, like orientation, help desk, and the Counsel for Children Initiative.
Can’t have anything slowing down moving these people out of the country.
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Deborah said on January 28, 2025 at 7:00 pm
I hope the backlash is severe when the people who voted for the leopard eating faces party realize that the leopards are in fact eating THEIR faces but I have my doubts if that will happen. A combo of people never admitting they were wrong or apologizing for anything, and cruelty being a big point by people who want nothing more than making vulnerable people miserable makes any self realization unlikely.
LB was freaked out by the closed down Medicaid portal. She has Medicaid and while we expected it to be monkeyed with by the Trump admin, we didn’t expect it to happen immediately.
This Trump healthcare fuckyou is depressing even it was eventually expected.
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