The Fucking News - Jan 15 edition
~~ recommended by newestbeginning ~~
I haven't put one of these up in awhile so thought it was time to interject some humor into the news of the day. Cheers, NB
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Trump is pumping new oil money to Venezuela's despots but spilled more blood in the democratic people's republic of Minneapolis
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The Trump administration on Wednesday indicated that tensions are easing with Iran and Venezuela, two repressive regimes under sanction by the U.S.
At the same time, the administration opened fire again in Minneapolis, MN, drawing blood, and peace talks hit a snag with Greenland, amid additional military buildup there by Europe.
TFN offers you those two preceding sentences in normal, dry, news-style in an effort to highlight how, under Pres. Donald Trump, American foreign policy now resembles nothing more than a rabid ferret assembling a Swiss watch.
Venezuela
After liberating Venezuela from the despotic rule of Pres. Nicolás Maduro, Trump says he’s getting along great with the people who carried out Maduro’s despotic rule and are now running the country themselves.
On Wednesday, Trump had a call with Maduro’s hand-picked vice president, now interim president, Delcy Rodriguez. Although she’s released some prisoners, the regime continues to crack down on political opponents and there’s no sign she’s done anything about all the fentanyl Venezuela was never producing.
Her security chief, Diosdado Cabello, who’s under indictment here for drug-running of cocaine (not fentanyl), suggested Wednesday that the regime won’t work with the U.S. But after his call with Rodriguez, Trump proclaimed, “We just had a great conversation today and she’s a terrific person.”
Trump is now helping the unelected, despotic, socialist regime get back on its feet economically. How? By helping them sell America’s oil!
Remember all that American oil that somehow ended up under Venezuelan soil? The U.S. is now brokering its sale on international markets.
Sales have already begun, the New York Times reports, with four million barrels already on the way. Some 50 million barrels had been sitting in storage due to U.S. sanctions and Trump’s blockade. Until now!
Naturally, the sales are legally suspect and prone to corruption because America’s authority to broker them remains, shall we say, murky, which is how Trump rolls.
Hilariously, Maduro’s removal and Trump’s 180 might turn out to be wildly positive for Venezuela, as long as Trump continues turning a blind eye to its socialist system, known as Chavismo. (The one thing that most fueled hostile U.S. right-wing machismo against Venezuela was Chavismo).
Venezuela reportedly is now getting $50 per barrel, by Trump’s math an 8,500% increase from the $30 it got from China.
(The White House said the total deal is worth $500 billion, which the Times says is actually $500 million, based on the current Trump-math currency exchange rate.)
Iran
If Trump is still planning military strikes on Iran, he made it very hard to justify Wednesday. He took credit for Iran canceling its planned executions and ending its violent assaults on protesters¹.
"We have been told that the killing in Iran is stopping, it has stopped, it's stopping," Trump said, conjugating the verb “stop” either for emphasis or in honor of National Conjugation Day².
He also said, “There's no plan for executions or an execution or executions,” using the singular and plural for emphasis or because he doesn’t understand conjugating.
Iranian security forces have killed thousands of protesters and to stop it Trump had threatened (illegal) military force, which allies asked him not to do, and which possibly would have galvanized support for the regime, prompting new Iranian attacks on Israel.
One reason the brutal violence against protesters may have stopped is that the protests have largely stopped. Witnesses Thursday reported no bonfires, gunfire, or debris in the streets overnight. Suggesting the regime won and retains control.
Asked whether he’s still considering (illegal) military action, Trump said he’ll “watch and see,” presumably meaning he’ll watch Fox and see.
Trump is, however, still using illegal military force in a region that poses a greater threat to his regime…
Minneapolis
U.S. federal forces spilled blood again on the war-torn streets of Minneapolis, MN, on Wednesday.
In contrast with Trump’s improving relations with the Iranian and Venezuelan regimes, this week he deployed roughly 3,000 new forces into Minneapolis. Roughly.
Trump’s troops initiated violence Wednesday, in the form of tear gas and grenades, against protesters who were more peaceful than the Iranian ones Trump swore to defend.
When federal forces chased one man down, people on the scene tried to keep them at bay. One of the federal police opened fire, hitting an unidentified man in the leg.
In the absence of amateur video, it’s not yet clear which elements of the government story are a lie. And TFN is saying “federal police” because officials have not said which agency the shooter worked for, which etymologists tell us is where the phrase “secret police” comes from!
The Trump administration in a statement Wednesday called for the surrender of the “organized resistance” led by rebel leaders Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, currently in hiding in the hills and jungles of Minnesota. Both have called for protesters to remain peaceful, which the vast majority have, unlike the invaders.
Greenland
Tensions simmered hotter Wednesday with Greenland, over absolutely nothing except Trump’s desire to have it.
Military reinforcements are arriving in Greenland from the U.K., France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. To help defend against America.
That’s right, the Germans have arrived in Greenland to fight fascism. What a time to be alive.
The new troops arrived as Wednesday’s talks between the U.S., Greenland, and Denmark went south, deepening Trump’s new, um, cold war.
Denmark’s foreign minister said afterward that “fundamental disagreement” remains with the U.S. over Greenland, which is a mostly autonomous Danish territory.
It’s worth noting that while the new troop deployments may seem like saber-rattling, they also address an issue Trump’s complaining about: Greenland’s supposed vulnerability to Russia or China. Which, yes, is bullshit, because Russia and China understand, unlike some presidents we could orange, that Greenland is under NATO’s protection.
“I have no understanding how this is an idea to begin with,” said one Republican senator anonymously, which is how this is an idea to begin with.
That said, even some reliable Trump allies and enablers said publicly, with their names and everything, that this Greenland bullshit is a bad idea. Which, of course, has zero correlation with whether Trump will drop it.
PEACENIX Along with a half-dozen congressional Democrats, Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are flying to Denmark Friday to assure the Danish government that the Republican-controlled Senate will block future U.S. military action against Greenland. That news came the same day the Republican-controlled Senate blocked an effort to block future U.S. military action against Venezuela.
Vice Pres. JD Vance broke a tie on a Senate bill that would have tied Trump’s hands in Venezuela the way existing laws failed to. The bill had been set for passage until Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) caved, claiming Trump double-pinky-promised not to invade Venezuela. Again.
IRRELEVANT POLLING New polling that Trump doesn’t care about came out Wednesday showing overwhelming U.S. opposition to his Greenland bullshit.
Only 17% of Americans even want Greenland. Only four percent support using military force to get Greenland. For perspective, that’s fewer Americans than Trump has personally molested.
Already, a majority of Americans, 56%, say Trump’s “gone too far” with the U.S. military. Only 35% say it’s just right, and only eight percent want more.
Funding Battle Rages Alongside Raging Non-Battles
While momentum is growing to force changes in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) via funding legislation, Democrats appear to be slipping everywhere that isn’t ICE.
The House has already passed most of the bills required to keep the government funded after Jan. 30. Four bills remain.
One includes the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS), which includes ICE, which includes misogynistic xenophobia and violence (KKK).
Holding up DHS funding, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said, is “one of the only routes that we have, and places of leverage that we have, right in front of us.”
So far, it seems to be working. Republicans haven’t brought the DHS funding for a vote yet.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) said Wednesday, “They obviously took it out of this package that we were supposed to deal with today because they knew there would be problems.”
Or because they’re counting on Democratic leaders to make those problems go away!
The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), said last week, “One has to be a realist about what you can do and what you can’t do in these places,” a phrase that Republicans haven’t uttered once jamming through one’s unpopular agenda.
And it turns out that DeLauro oneself was unrealistic about one’s realism about what you can do. Because after momentum was created unrealistically against DHS funding — by people who are not her — DeLauro on Tuesday changed one’s realism about what you can do in these places, saying, “I am looking for policy riders in the Homeland Security bill to [be] able to rein in ICE. ... ICE is terrorizing our communities, and I have called on masked, armed ICE agents to leave our towns.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Wednesday said about DHS funding what he’s refused to say about funding every other fascist Trump agency: “Right now, there’s no bipartisan path forward for the Department of Homeland Security.”
Hilariously, one Republican “compromise” on DHS offered Wednesday would ensure that funding is used for ICE bodycams. Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) said Republicans are willing to compromise and allow language explicitly directing ICE to spend money on bodycams.
The reason that’s hilarious is that ICE has openly said it wants more video of its performative terrorism and actual terrorism. So the danger is that Democrats mistake bodycams for an acceptable concession in exchange for funding said terrorism.
Which will also include paying the salary of white supremacist ICE attorney James Rodden, after ICE promised to investigate Rodden’s white-supremacist website and then stopped talking about it. Even former ICE staffers are now coming out to say not only that killing Renee Good was wrong, but that the entire way ICE operates now is wrong.
There is some sign of growing Democratic fight to do something about the Obamacare subsidies that expired in December, but for the most part, Democrats are not using the leverage that Jeffries and DeLauro now acknowledge can be used to win change.
The House last week easily passed funding for the Justice Department, which the Senate is now working on. As TFN has noted before, that bill would fund crucial Justice Department work such as prosecuting Democratic elected officials, investigating Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) for her video saying troops should obey the law, defending Trump’s illegalities in court, installing unlawful federal prosecutors, ginning up illegal legal rationales for illegal deportations and Boat-iac Killer™ maritime murders and the attack on Venezuela, not to mention all the funding Senate Democrats are now about to approve for the ongoing Epstein Files™ coverup.
On Wednesday, the House easily passed funding for the State Department, which laid the groundwork for snatching foreign students for writing op-eds, drove Trump’s Venezuela policy, and, as I revealed last year, dropped Uganda’s LGBTQ+ death penalty from its human-rights report.
Only 57 House Democrats voted against funding Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s salary.
IMPEACHMENT PICKING Some House Democrats are rushing to defend Homeland (sic) Security Secretary Kristi Noem. She’s now the target of impeachment efforts, which some House Democrats have a problem with, even though she’s terrible.
Rep. Robin Kelly (D-IL) is leading the impeachment effort, which is picking up more support every day, presumably because Noem is terrible.
But some Democrats aren’t happy about it.
Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) is opposed. Rep. Don Davis (D-NC) said, “I would still need to figure out what rises, exactly, to the level of impeachment,” referring to the Homeland (sic) Security secretary who attends an antisemitic Bible study, thinks habeas corpus is the right to tyranny, deported people to a torture dungeon, and called Renee Good a domestic terrorist.
Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-GA) told Axios that it’s “quite possible that impeachment could be a distraction.”
Bishop made his remarks about impeachment being a distraction even though they were also a distraction.
Rep. Adam Gray (D-CA) said, “One of the things I dislike about D.C. a lot is the number of messaging items ... People introduce bills that have no hope of any consequential change in peoples’ lives.”
Gray introduced his message about messaging bills even though it had no hope of any consequential change in peoples’ lives. He also seemed unaware that messaging bills actually do achieve consequential change once congressional cheesedips stops dismissing them as messaging bills.
To wit, Kelly pointed out that even swing-state members and fringe, radical centrists are getting on board with impeaching Noem, such as Reps. Gabe Vasquez (D-NM) and Angie Craig (D-MN), whose state is currently under attack by Noem, who is terrible.
Kelly also took issue with the notion that fighting fascism is a distraction from the issues of health care and affordability. It’s tough, Kelly noted, to have a functioning economy when federal troops are storming your streets and snatching up workers, consumers, and even non-commodified humans.
BIG GOVERNMENT If you’re hungering for something that feels like a win, keep in mind that Republicans control every branch of federal government, Trump promised to slash the “Big Government” that Republicans have been vowing to slash since the cuts of Presidents Ronald Reagan and, um, Bill Clinton … and yet, the budget bills going through for 2026 reflect pretty much “Same Government.”
One after another, both Republican-controlled chambers are passing budget bills that largely retain past funding levels for science, the arts, and even foreign aid. (State Department funding is being cut, but not anywhere near what Trump wanted.)
What the Trump administration will do with said funding is pretrumptively bad, but the good news is that members of both parties are preserving levels that are redirectable for good once we get through this bullshit.
Another Day, Another War Crime
The Defense Department illegally disguised a military plane as a civilian jet during its already illegal murder of 11 people on Sept. 2, 2025, the beginning of the Boat-iac Killer maritime killing spree, the New York Times reports.
The clear violation of legal and military principles will not be investigated by the FBI with its new Justice Department funding.
Various Pentagon manuals on, uh, “warrior ethos,” describe it as outside “the bounds of military honor” to pretend you’re a civilian, with, I guess, a civil ethos. In fact, military commanders are duty-bound to “distinguish their own forces from the civilian population.”
How come? Because otherwise, combatants would just kill civilians randomly, just in case, and then you’re no better than the Trump administration. In fact, this kind of shit, known as perfidy, gets its own entire section in military manuals, even though Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth talks about perfidy less than he talks about beards.
After the Sept. 2, 2025, attack, the Pentagon stopped using its illegal fake passenger jets. Just like it stopped murdering survivors of the first rounds of murder. It’s almost as if someone found out about all the criming.
Two Quickies
A federal court on Wednesday said that California can go ahead with its gerrymandered congressional map. The Justice Department sued to block the new districts, which were drawn to favor Democrats after Pres. Donald Trump told states, notably Texas, to gerrymander their maps and save him from impeachment messaging. If the Justice Department uses its expected funding from Democrats to take California to the Supreme Court, the high court is expected to allow the new maps just as it allowed the Texas maps. Although that would require consistently and intellectual honesty so who tf knows.
Okay, maybe some immigrants really are taking our jobs — and Pres. Donald Trump is helping them! Forbes reports that the Trump Organization last month filed for visas to bring in 36 foreign workers to its Virginia winery. How come? Because America is all out of workers! Or at least, all out of workers willing to accept $13.90/hour, less than what Trump has paid before. How can he pay them less? Because in October, his Labor Department changed the rules to allow lower pay for some foreign workers.
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