I hope you and yours are well. Life is hard on my end lately. A Social Security Disability Judge told me he was the ultimate arbiter of truth before deciding that I should go back to managing restaurants even though I cannot walk unassisted without being a fall risk. When even a spot of rain scares the Beelzebub out of me and I busted my big booty falling in winter weather twice earlier this year. On top of that I cannot be on me feet for more than 20 minutes before I start to get woozy and my feet turn a painful & glowing red from what is probably P.O.T.S. and cannot even sit up in a seated position for more than 2-4 hours without needing to lie down for at least 45 minutes. I feel loosely housebound. There aren’t a lot of places to comfortably lie down out in public, especially when my partner drives a Honda Fit.

The Social Security Disability hearings are remarkably adversarial and I could tell that this judge had it out for me to begin with. Seriously, what in the actual 💩 are we doing this for? People deceptively not working in order to get on disability is vanishingly rare such that this is simply making sick people give up and either off themselves or work themselves to death. Especially if you’re under 50 years of age. I find this to be a particularly cruel form of moralizing, since being disabled at a younger age is already worse. Also the State of Arkansas’ child support folks have taken my passport, my credit, and the driving and insurance licenses I had; all in order to punish me for living poor with an unpleasant constellation of diseases. In an odd way it’s nice that my feet have too much neuropathy to work the clutch on my partner’s manual transmission car such that the lost license is but an afterthought. I couldn’t even make it through a shift in a call center yet they keep threatening to arrest and imprison me for being poor. I don’t think they really will as long as I’m in this application & appeals process but still, it’s not something that’s fun to get in the mail. Plus they haven’t let me see my children in a year. And no, I’ve never been subject to an investigation or determination of child abuse or neglect, this is about money and them thinking what the Texas Judge was thinking. That is, I don’t look old or sick enough for them to not assume that I am faking. Which feels like they’re projecting their own insipid dishonesty onto me but oh well.

Oh and again with the odd things to be thankful for I’ve got a tilt table test coming up and maybe I’ll get an actual diagnosis of P.O.T.S. for what’s keeping me from being out of bed for long, let alone being fully ambulatory. That will both help the disability case and my sanity. So yes, I am looking forward to a diagnosis that’s chronic, progressive, and likely untreatable in my case since the drugs would likely make my Hidradenitis suppurativa or bipolar disorder rather unlivable. I have to live with whatever this is anyway, so of course I would like the surety of giving a name to it instead of guessing.

This is where I live nowadays with my poverty, pain, wooziness, and woe from not hugging my kids. All of which drags me down to the doldrums every day of every bloody week. It’s difficult not to suspect that maybe I did something to deserve this and thinking back I have made a veritable 💩-ton of mistakes. I dropped out of college before going back, I’ve had times where I indulged in alcohol most nights of the week, I refused to see what was happening to my marriage and let myself get put in a bad position, I smoked cigarettes on and off for decades even though I have the lungs of a premie with asthma & bronchitis, I am at times a terrible judge of character, I’ve had a number of unfortunately meaningless meets from dating apps before finding my endless wonder of a partner, and perhaps worst of all I let myself get locked into a spiral of grief, anxiety, and bipolar disorder after my father’s passing in ‘14. My son was born a few months later and for months I couldn’t hold him without weeping from a sort of survivor’s guilt. Also it’s a family tradition now since my father never knew his father who died in ‘43 fighting the Imperial Japanese Army in the Aleutian Islands off of Alaska so neither me nor my son ever met a living grandfather on either side. Oh and my great grandfather died when my grandfather was 12 years old before dying himself as a US Army lieutenant at the ripe old age of 23.

The thing is, as hard as I try to blame myself for my current situation, all of my major health problems are caused by a combination of genetics and long covid. Granted there are some bits of wear and tear like worn joints that I overworked or a hiatal hernia that I probably gave myself with straight bourbon over ice, but the issues that keep me from working are not among them. Even so, I was not done trying to blame myself. Because even though I’m an atheistic humanist I still spent time pondering if it was karmic from a past life lived badly. Then I remembered something that my dad told me 30 years ago with regard to his Multiple Sclerosis: sometimes you have to quit asking ‘why me?’ and instead ask ‘why not?’ Indeed, systems break down and severe viral infections can easily hurry things along. I may have been able to do 55+ hours a week in a hot kitchen a few years ago but that time has simply passed. Hell, even the long Covid infection wasn’t my fault since I got it from a roommate and not from lazy masking at work or improper social distancing in public.

Now, I ask that you not fret for my safety or health. I’ve got SNAP and Medicaid expansion and my partner graciously lets me continue to live in our modest apartment since I became disabled about two years into our relationship. I’ll soldier on till the end as my Grandfather did when they sent his unit to Alaska with tropical island equipment. My grandmother and great aunt went around their neighborhood in Clinton, Mississippi and collected coats and mailed them to my Grandfather’s unit in Alaska. The package got there before the replacement equipment did. And like him I can survive the elements because of the love of my friends and family. I’m not seeking paid subscribers because my pieces are sporadically published and I have neither staff nor production value. Nor do I need your help to survive this unholy year. But it would be groovy to help keep me in Earl Grey and agave nectar with a one time $1 donation. For what it’s worth, I will share a pot of it with you if you ever come through Little Rock, Arkansas.

Buy me a tea 🫖

Either way, I thank you for reading my piece. This is perhaps the most personal one so far so I hope that it doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable; for it’s meant to be a share and not a homily. Until next time, dear readers, I hope we can appreciate the rain instead of lamenting it. Sorry about the background buzz in this recording. The old Fender amp needs a new tube:

Click HERE to hear ‘Soft Rain’ on an antique Rickenbacker bass guitar

Until next time,

NK

So how’s your deadly heat dome going? Mine is even more dismal than the study of economics (yes, its nickname really is ‘The Dismal Science’). The steamy blanket of the Arkansas outdoors in July flares up my multiple chronic illnesses such that pure misery lies right outside my front door anytime after about 10:30am. I cannot help but to wonder how much our systems and sanity can safely take while our Dear Diapered Dementia-laden Donnie Quixotically skewers windmill projects.

I figure that famine in sensitive regions and global recession will brew a storm like no other if the war in Iran continues; for we may well be in the last decade of significant fighting over hydrocarbons but the fights over water are already beginning with the bombing of water desalination plants by both the US and Iran. I mean, how long can folks go without bathing, hydrating properly, or watering crops? India and Pakistan’s fight over fresh water has been brewing for decades. Even a few western US states have a longtime and protracted legal fight over water rights in the rivers they share. The nexus of water, agriculture, waterways (including precursors for medicine, plastics, and fertilizers coming out of Hormuz), a dangerously worsening climate, and technology (both deeply helpful and painfully superfluous) will surely dominate the spats and eventual agreements of this century. So yeah, if I were in a fretting mood there’s plenty enough to worry over. Yet I am not in a fretting mood, for these are simply the stakes for the future. I believe that all of that risky madness is fairly navigable given that we soon rid ourselves of feckless & corrupt leaders.

So how do we do that? Well, it’s unexciting compared to the frothy & fetid dreams of rolled out guillotines & Luigi Mangione copycats that I sometimes see when I scroll BluSky and Substack. It’s also less grand than mass protests quickly taking down the Prime Minister of Albania for trying to turn a Flamingo reserve into another Epstein Island for the Rothschild’s & Trump’s. That is, we must show up this fall and do the work for the mid terms. I’ve written this notion a number of times recently so I hope I’m not physically abusing a deceased horse here, it’s just what I think the chorus of Team Blue’s song should be until November.

To that end, there are some puddin’ headed notions that we must leave behind. Please know that I am not here to purity test or silence voices on the left. Nor am I trying to upset centrists or trash their politicians. I am simply inviting all comers to have a think about some of what I see to be unlikely conjecture and misinformation that keeps orbiting around Team Blue’s online conversations.

The first claim that I’m addressing is how ol’ Musky supposedly ‘glitched the matrix’ with Starlink satellites in order to rig the ‘24 election WITHIN the ballot box since it looks like Elon Musk and Trump both privately claimed such in November ‘24. The ‘within the ballot box’ part is particularly important here, since Republicans have spent decades getting very good at manipulating voters from outside of the ballot box by mucking about around the margins with polling place shenanigans, gerrymandering, lawfare, voter roll purges, graft (Elon in Wisconsin & Pennsylvania), the largest propaganda machine in human history, giant war chests of often dark or oligarchical money, pretending that McConnell is somewhere playing squash as he recovers, and even a bloody insurrection. All of this outside of the ballot box manipulation was done almost exclusively in the light of day and is mostly well documented. In fact, most of the Trump regime’s crimes since January of ‘25 have been easy to document. That’s just a matter how safe they feel in their corrupt consolidation of all three branches of the federal government after practicing such at a smaller scale in many red states over the last few decades. As such, why would I believe that a group so deeply brazen & shambolic rigged the ‘24 elections when it’s not their consistent modus operandi and it’s without leaving even the tiniest shred of evidence outside of the words of Trump & Musk, who are likely the two most prolific liars in modern history?

This misinformation is doing three bad things: it ebbs faith in our elections that could depress turnout this year, it refuses to admit that enough mistakes were made mistakes to sink Harris’ campaign from within, and it’s a refusal to admit that the US electorate really did put Trump in office a second time. Both of those outright refusals are kinda like alcoholism in that we must first admit there’s a problem in order to address it. Incidentally, I personally believe that the Substack constantly beating this drum, “This Will Hold”, is likely a Russian disinformation campaign. I’m sorry that I must be so brutally honest if there are any fans of theirs reading this but brutal honesty is kinda my thing and here we are.

The second most common wrong headed claim I see on Team Blue is arguing that “Fighting fire with Fire” is an actual strategy. It’s not. It’s a stone simple mirroring tactic at best. Sometimes it can work well, like we should have paid canvassers in every state registering voters as the Republicans have done for years now. And other times it will merely make us resemble MAGA, since one cannot disassemble the oppressive master’s house with the master’s tools; such only mints a new oppressive master. I see this with folks who are at least ostensibly on Team Blue advocating for MAGA American citizens to face deportations, vote disenfranchising including literacy tests, involuntary reproductive sterilization, or legally required mental reprogramming. Yet we cannot let any of that pass as decent conversation since sacrificing our free society for the comfort of what they see as security & safety is exactly what MAGA has done and the left doing it in response will see the US to the same dustbin of history just as quickly.

For this third and final claim that I take issue with, remember that I am not trying to pick fights, favorites, or at old wounds. I am merely inviting you to an unvarnished look at the claim that Biden’s was a historically successful presidency. To be fair, I do think that the first two years of the Biden Administration were pretty darn successful. The economy turned around surprisingly well, the Ukraine war seemed to be something that the US could decisively help end by sometime in 2023, and the Chips and Inflation Reduction Acts were fairly friggin’ momentous. But then many of us (including myself until early spring ‘24) were still bamboozled by the Israelis’ story with what they were doing with Gaza in response to the October 7 attack. Note that I still believe to this day that the Bidens and Kamala Harris’ and her family are decent folks when I say that they were awfully obtuse when it came to Netanyahu’s orchestration of war crimes. Albeit in much less damning way, Harris mirrored the silence that Israel made by killing reporters, observers, and aid workers when she refused to let a Democrat Palestinian American couple speak at the convention while allowing the Israeli-American couple to do just that. Between that and putting her feet up with Liz Cheney onstage, this opened the campaign up to being called warhawks by the Trump camp.

There were other failures too. Garland didn’t have to wait months on end for the J6 Committee to finish in order to prosecute Trump and Jack Smith’s paperwork really was irregular. I personally think the delay played directly into Trump’s claims of a ‘witch hunt’. The Biden Administration was afraid to do anything about the border crisis, playing badly into Trump’s best issue with voters. Just as the Biden Administration was afraid to provide enough support for Ukraine to win, only giving them enough to hold their own. They were also afraid to admit that Biden has slowed a bit (but obviously still not demented) such that he should have considered being a one term president a lot sooner. Seriously, ask any octogenarian or gerontologist. Most will quickly tell you that eight decades or more is too old for such a demanding job. After that, the Democrats were afraid to hold an open convention because apparently the only open convention they can find among many in the history books was ‘68. So instead they opted for a farce with a DJ in sunglasses that obviously didn’t match the primary ballots cast by millions. Oh and I know that this one is total nitpicking but they could have gotten almost any musical act[s] they wanted for the convention but instead we had a DJ in a blazer like it’s a high school dance. Also, I will never quite understand why Harris offered progressive change like Medicare for all when onstage during the Presidential primary in ‘16 but offered little outside of non-Trump vibes for ‘24. And here the title to this piece finally comes into focus: Yes, they bungled. I do not seek to stoke hate or rehash anything by writing this. In my very curmudgeonly opinion, the Biden Administration tried damn hard to do good for the entirety of the American people, even if their communications were often quite awful (including that Dark Brandon stuff) and the failures stacked up towards the end. I am not calling it a success just because they rebuilt the economy just to accidentally deliver it to Trump so the Epstein class can benefit from it politically, economically, and criminally.

I hope that the helpful spirit in which I penned this comes clearly through all of the woe and radical candor that this piece also contains. Please feel free to tell me I’m wrong in comments since I’m just a disabled hipster who’s sometimes wrong and not a famed historian or a celebrated political scientist. I hope I don’t lose subscribers over this but if you must go, then I simply wish you well on your journey.

Best,

NK

I know this is wickedly late in the year for a post about July 4th but for what it’s worth I’m not gonna talk about this unholy year’s sweaty and slimy green fiasco; for I think all of us who could bare to look have seen and suffered it well enough by now.

As a millennial from the early 1980’s, I wasn’t even a twinkle in my momma’s eye or a twitch in my daddy’s pants in ‘76; but I still grew up loving the halcyon tales of it from my elders. Muscle cars were still new, Springsteen was ascendant, Elton John celebrated with all of Philadelphia, and red white, and blue streamers ran the streets on the handles of bicycles. I can remember thinking as a teenager in ‘96 that ‘26 is totally gonna be a real party and surely life will be pretty great by then, right? Riiight???

I could not have known that I had already lived my best (so far) 4th of July a few years before that in ‘90. My parents took me (I was an only child) to Sea World in San Antonio, Texas, which was simply magical since I loved marine biology as a kid. I suppose technically it was my second time since my pregnant mother got kissed by one of the Shamu’s (a name given to a series of performing Orcas at Sea World, a practice they have since ended for good reasons) and had the picture to prove it. I remember after a sparkling & sequined Dolly Parton performed around closing time at Sea World like the brilliant and kind soul we know her to be; my dad found a remote parking lot, turned on the oldies radio station, and pulled a surprise bag of bottle rockets and firecrackers out of the trunk and then taught me how to use both. That was so fun that I remember every detail of the then-unfamiliar smell and sting of black powder my eyes; right up until our car got struck with a bottle rocket and a Roman candle burst from the direction of the (assumedly drunk) folks on the other side of the parking lot. My father wisely chose to ‘retreat from enemy fire’ by quickly getting us back into the car and heading back to Dallas. It’s gallows humor-kind of funny to me to remember that last part 36 July 4th’s later but it was straight up terrifying to a boy of 8 years.

Perhaps that’s a typical memory of a boy growing up Southern Baptist in Texas from age 5-15 in the 80’s and 90’s. Normalizing the risks of getting one’s face flash-fried by a moron-fired pyrotechnic, mangled in an ATV/motorcycle accident, or the growing concerns about cigarette smoke that were still mostly failing to stop kids from being exposed or sparking up themselves was all common enough among my peers. I will brush that back just a little bit since some of these risks can also be learning experiences (except the cigarette one which seems worse than pointless) that help develop the nerve and presence of mind needed to RESPOND with thought & action to problems cropping up instead of merely REACTING with emotion & haste. I feel like I personally learned it best when managing restaurants and construction sites, but those are stories for another time.

Yet let’s go back to that moment it all went wrong. Careful planning and efforts on the part of my parents, Sea World, Dolly Parton, and 264 years of July 4th’s went into that night but it only took some drunks a second to tip over a beer bottle bottle bearing a bottle rocket for it to go wrong since of course my dad’s response of profanity and a honked car horn was to be met with a follow-up strike by Roman candle. I suppose both my dad and the drunks were reacting instead of responding there, which is ironic given the brushback I offered. Maybe that’s why the ease at which an apparently idillic situation can become hellish stuck with me since. Nowadays I’m so sensitive to heat, smoke, and loud noise that a July fireworks show here in sweltering Arkansas sounds like a chore at best, my health definitely couldn’t handle any cigarette habit, and I’m too physically disabled to ride a motorcycle safely anymore. I prefer my kids to learn such mindfulness I described above less risky activities such as music lessons, Taekwondo, or maybe one day we’ll all go together to try mastering our fear of zip lining.

You know how some Sci-Fi has has a theme about human ingenuity and cooperation having limitless capabilities? A good example of this for millennials would be Titan A.E. Dear Readers, there’s a valid corollary of this for human stupidity (though AI sloppiness seems to be getting folded in with it lately). Most anything edifying and beautiful that the rest of us could ever possibly build can be destroyed with an order[s] of magnitude less effort it took to build, be it quickly via the cruel audacity of DERP (like our dear diapered dementia-laden Donnie) or more insidiously with Rupert’s faux news, AI slop, or ‘autodidacts’ who are ‘just asking questions’. This tells me something about our current times in that we’re never gonna be completely beyond this fight. We may well get more than one election away from the brink we have debatably have been for 10 years, but we can never not be vigilant since a nation that is truly of, for, and by the people is what we need to breathe free.

More generally, Americans of good conscience and ability all need to show up and do as much work as we can for the ‘26 midterms in order to drown out MAGA’s cheating; but that’s the future that’s likely coming. This fascism install has been too shambolic, too unpopular, and too miserly to be successful. I mean, Tammany Hall knew to give away Turkeys for the implicit graft, Mussolini made the Trains run on time, and Hitler provided lots of jobs in the modernization and arming of Germany - yet these WHADBAGs (White Hateful Angry Dumb Boys And Girls) cannot even paint a pool or hold a fair, let alone come up with policies that would help at least their own voters, if not the rest of us.

Dear readers, I have added paid subscriptions to my Substack because I was assured that not having it turned on was bad for the algorithm. Nothing is behind a paywall and I’m not asking for folks to worry with subscribing or tipping unless my work is really so meaningful to you personally that you would like to buy me some extra Earl Grey Tea and Agave nectar.

Best,

~NK

I cannot help thinking about the very first piece I wrote in January of 2025. Which is only so long to have been here on Substack but it feels like a different era as it was written five days before the fell inauguration that has haunted, hunted, and tried to take Habeas Corpus from immigrants (and assumedly the rest of us given time). Here I sit between the same 1970’s wood panels of my apartment here in Little Rock, Arkansas but even that feels different now; almost as if this is a different world and not just a time away from when I wrote that piece. Please take a moment to read it, it is short:

Click here to read “Take This Time Of Peace To Heart”

This did not age well at all, huh? That is, I was so wrong that it’s almost as if I asked a man without arms to clap in applause. Of course now we know that Netanyahu did not wait long before he mostly refocused the war to the north with Lebanon. Then Netanyahu goaded Trump into initially bombing and then months later warring with Iran. Lebanon is also where some of the refugees went from Gaza, leveling up the horror for those unlucky souls.

In my mind this was by far the worst piece I’ve done on Substack. Like the very worst pies in London kind of bad, to be painfully honest. Brutal honesty is most of what it is to know me. I’ll admit that I fail to soften the edge when I really should sometimes, but at least my biggest flaw is being intense and not being full of shit. I say that because half of the other Bipolars I’ve known were manipulative and narcissistic liars. I dabbled in such in my Southern Baptist raised youth but before long I became dedicated to doing my flat best to have integrity in both word and in deed. Maybe that’s why I loathe liars, lechers, and bigots so deeply now?

Today it is devilishly difficult not to hate the entire state of Israel and not just the right-wingers in charge. To be clear, I do not hate the entire state of Israel. Yet it is a continuing struggle not to; not just for the lies and genocide of the initial Gaza war and then Iran & Lebanon, but for all the times I ever defended them as a western democracy in a rough neighborhood.

I think back to when one of my childhood friends married an Israeli and moved over there in the late 90’s. This was when Israel was getting (in)famous for bulldozing the homes of the families of Palestinians who committed certain crimes. She tried so hard to convince me that it was about security and how supposedly the families were known to be involved that I mostly believed it. Close enough to ride the fence and say ‘both sides’, ‘but they’re a democracy!’, or ‘The Jewish people needed a homeland’. Now at least I damn well know that I was oftentimes wrong when I thought well of Israel in the years since. My childhood friend still lives there with her husband and children but I wouldn’t even hazard a guess as to where they are on any of this. Even without knowing if she and her family are dovish protestors or die hard war hawks I still don’t want them to see harm. If I let myself hate the entire state of Israel then I am dehumanizing my friend and that’s wrong as all hell too.

Now we come to the present. Is the TrumpanYahu war over? Or more precisely, will Bibi risk prison in order to accept a deal that’s not so great for Israel? I sure hope so. Thankfully, it seems likely at this writing looking at the commodities markets. Even so the possibility of war returning still frightens me for my children who are being raised Jewish, as it further endangers the rest of the Jewish diaspora along with them. It also frightens me because should that happen Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz again and many places in the world would likely see famine. We will soon see how close I am to the truth when I say that Putin rides shirtless atop Death, Hegseth looks queasy astride War, RFK jr swats a bug and eats it as he rides on Pestilence, and Donald Jehoshaphat Trump is slumped over on Famine.

I apologize for my last piece being such a downer. Every way I could think of to allow a spark of hope felt conceitedly over-optimistic at the time. Today I can tell that I was letting my depression and rage get the better of me. Plus maybe I am wrong and they will end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz. Oh and can we please add Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to the ‘liquor cabinet’ inhabited by FBI Dir. Kash Patel and SecDef Hegseth since he referred to the Strait of Hormuz as the strait of vermouth? Between the Freudian slip and his fistfight with Elon last year, it seems beyond argument at this point.

You may be asking yourself “What in the name of all that is snarky is a suspect hamster and why is Noel dragging JFK into it?” I will make it make sense but please let us start out with one of my favorite quotes attributed to any US President:

Forgive your enemies but never forget their names.

~John F Kennedy

I cannot help but to dwell on this lately. We have both the notion of laying down the burden of hate, like MLK jr suggested, but with a realist’s vigilance going forward. Which makes perfect sense since MAGA cultists cannot literally feel the grudge any of us may hold against them though it is toxic to our own mental and physical health over the long term. This is true wherever they are or even whether their own evil is lesser, middling, or greater. Now, the second half of JFK’s statement is indeed just as important in this authentically unholy year of 2026. For it can sometimes be a little too easy to forget how shitty people are just because they took down their MAGA flag. Yes, some of them will find literal redemption, for where there is life there is hope for embracing important truths that will eventually develop one’s sanity and empathy. Yet most who are still supporting Trump at this point will never find much in the way of goodness or truth ever again. They will simply blame Trump’s people, greed, or dementia for hurting MAGAs and not just hurting all of the people the MAGAs hate. That is, most will still again buy into whatever bigoted authoritarianism that gets repackaged in ‘28, ‘32 or beyond so long as they aren’t being trotted out as the scapegoats themselves.

Try as I may, I cannot manage to follow JFK’s sage advice myself, not even by a last second shot long enough to make a sports bar explode in violence. I can feel that my cardiovascular system and my bipolar disorder have me suffering more for this every day it goes on, but still here we are. Perhaps if I write this piece well enough then I will convince myself to get there because nothing else I tried has gotten me over this threshold. I came close back in February during a break from news and social media but then the very stupidest war of all American history broke through. Such that now, even if a MAGA were reincarnated as a friendly little hamster, I would still consider them to be highly suspect 😈🐹. I figure that there may not be a way for most of us to uphold JFK’s standard until hundreds of billions in civil judgements and thousands of years of prison sentences get handed down for this historic hate-crime spree of an administration. Until that halcyon day comes, Dear Readers, I am afraid that our struggle will be every bit as gritty & shitty as the peril.

~NK

Let me begin by expressing my own great relief at a ceasefire in the Middle East. I fear it will not last but before that let’s talk about the context.

On my last piece I described the possibility that Markwayne ‘Punch-Drunk’ Mullen might get confirmed by the senate as clown shoe crazy. By my own personal metric of historic inanity in the Senate, governance by requisitely goofy footwear has come to pass. Immediately after having some tiny bouts of sanity that dislodged and vociferously dressed-down the hysterically corrupt dog killer, Noem, the senate has approved another irretrievably stupid purveyor of violence with vacant eyes and resting bitch face. As far as I can tell, he was nominated for the same reasons he was elected Senator: he’s an EX-MMA fighter with a beard that looks good on TV. We have a president that looks at a massive law enforcement agency that was in trouble (so much trouble that it will set back other kinds of policing in the US for a generation or more) already and now needs new leadership and thinks, “I need a hairy clapping seal with brain damage in there!”Oh and did we make fun of how short Mullen is yet? Mullen literally carries around a little box to stand on so he’s a big boy at the podium.

So how does a vote for a nominee that is more of the same at DHS really suddenly justify such clownish derision? Derision that is in danger of being ableist, coulrophobic, and shoelophobic cannot really be aptly applied on a national scale, right? Wrong, I present you with an image of Trump’s own handpicked choice of footwear for Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

As I wring my hands over it, this insanity is becoming the death of the American empire. The empire sits on the three pillars of economics, soft power, and security. Trump has led us to a place where all three pillars could teeter into historic failure. Note that attacks on the rule of law endangers all three pillars but there’s still a story for each pillar individually.

As for the direct threat to the pillar of American style globalization and economic power, there’s a new BRICS currency basket-based international payments system that together with Iran’s control of the straits represents a growing existential threat to the US petrodollar and the SWIFT international banking settlement system. This system is what keeps US treasuries both ubiquitous and unavoidable for most nations who need to engage in international trade. The economic pillar is further distressed by Hormuz related supply shocks, mass deportations at home, mounting US government and consumer debt, and inane tariffs that are still being imposed even after most of tariffs were struck down by the US Supreme Court. Check out some videos from Max@UNFTR for further background and discussion on this part.

I know AI is powerful and it will likely always be around but the bubble is real too. This is compounded when Chinese AI firms are faring better mostly because they go about their coding and training in a utilitarian tool-based way instead of this poorly thought out hyper-scaling by way of data center construction that we’ve seen. Compare this to all the TechBros who are breathlessly hoping to be the first to invent Automated General Intelligence (AGI) as if they’re summoning a celestial being to remake the world. Of course the TechBros are partly doing this in hopes that their AGI ‘god’ invents transhumanism for them to live forever as robots or digital avatars. Seriously, click HERE for my playful piece on this. Paul Krugman, Ronon Farrow, Andrew Yang, and Marcus on AI all have good work that I drew from for the looming unzipping of AI.

The United States’ diplomatic and soft power, both domestically and internationally, was essentially euthanized by Trump 2.0. From the pedantic and vile bile posted on social media, the gutting of USAID, the damage to public health, the unprovoked threats to NATO members, the bigoted demonization of DEI, the attacks on education and news media, the attacks on PBS and Voice of America, the gutting of the state department, the failures of ICE & Border Patrol, and finally the capriciously corrupt nature of the tariffs. Given all of this, it is no wonder that the pillar of soft power could be broken along with the economic pillar by the starting the Iran war while the Iranians were earnestly negotiating in order to distract from the Epstein files. This is such that now the United States had got about as much credibility as a convicted pedophile sitting in a van with candy just outside of a park playground. I lament that the United States has come such a very long way from the Marshal Plan and Operation Vittles.

So now we have the economic and soft power pillars brought to a breaking point by the fighting of the Iran war. It also seems as if the security pillar is right now meeting the same breaking point by the endgame in Iran. We won nothing. We made Iran an acting superpower by the very act of soundly and quickly defeating both the US and Israel. With this historic defeat, the US has showed the world that they haven’t the leadership, morality, relationships with allies, the will in the electorate to fight, or the technological edge that we used to enjoy for our military.

I want to be wrong about the ceasefire in the Middle East, but I just don’t think that Netanyahu or the Trump regime are done with fighting this war. In Netanyahu’s case it would seem to put him in danger of losing power and then losing in criminal court. In the Trump regime’s case it seems telling that Hegseth is trying to lazily justify keeping a large force in the region instead of cutting our losses and sailing home so as to avoid undercutting the coming negotiations. Despite rising direct costs, the service members need for leave, the increasingly depleted stockpile of ordinance, and around two dozen hyper expensive planes and helicopters lost amidst ‘complete air superiority’; they still aren’t sailing home.

The US is like a bully who just lost a fight they brought upon themselves who’s now trying to sober up and gather his courage outside the bar to try for another surprise attack. A surprise attack that won’t be a surprise in a war that’s ‘not a war’ in order to pull a historic defeat out of the fire that ‘isn’t a defeat’. What could go possibly go wrong when the Iranians have an order of magnitude more drones and missiles than we have interceptors?

Hello Dear Readers!

I wanted to write about White Christian Nationalism this time since I have a bit of perspective to share. I haven’t written on this before because I try not to even think about it here in middle age (which in 2026 Arkansas under the Trump & Sarah Huckleberry regimes seems far stranger and scarier than Middle Earth). I mostly grew up in the mystical miasma of malevolence that is commonly referred to as the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). I doubt I would have made it out as soon if my parents hadn’t ironically decided to give me free rein to bike to the local library on Saturdays. I say ironically since they both forced my indoctrination and allowed me access to the knowledge (such as Evolutionary Biology & Psychology and Bertrand Russell) that would one day shatter said indoctrination. To this day I count myself lucky to have left the SBC as a young man; even though the ordeal eventually cost me most of my family, fractured my spine, killed a good machinist job, and left me without a community for most of the adult years of my life. How was something that traumatic 100% worthwhile? It was worth it because before I left all that behind I was an angrier person who told bigoted jokes and had a confederate bumper sticker. Nothing is worth living like that. Especially when the principal hits you with a 2 ½ ft 2×4 wooden paddle so hard that it fractures your spine. Like JFK I can still remember my enemy’s name: Reverend Jim Clarke III.

OOF! I just read that first paragraph again and it kinda sounds like I should instead write a tear-in-muh-beer country song with this story instead but press on we shall. The first time I had the American iteration of White Christian Nationalism fully explained to me was at Canyon Creek Christian Academy (which was later shuttered for abusive misconduct) in the fall of 1995 in Richardson, Texas. It was Mrs Love’s 7th grade English class. We had just read “Johnny Tremain” by Esther Forbes before she launched into a classroom sermon so wild that I think maybe it made me dissociate for the rest of the day.

Before we get into the bonkers 1995 version let’s talk about the 1943 version that my 7th grade class had just read. There is a subtle yet persistent element of White Christian Nationalism throughout the book. The women and black folks are only described as either slaving away or doing very little on the sidelines - even though thousands of black people and even a number of women fought in direct combat roles in the Revolutionary War (and were probably disappointed when they were often given half pensions and little to no rights). I also did not find any mention of Jews, Theist Unitarians like Adams or Jefferson (which is weird given that it’s Boston), HooDoo Practitioners, Native American beliefs, or Muslims though all of those folks were very much a part of who fought the British back then. Seriously, this 1943 Newberry Award winner quietly tells the story as if it was a white, male, and Bible thumping revolution where women and people of color had supporting roles at best. To bring home the ‘Christian’ part of the White Christian Nationalism the character Dr Warren tells us that the creation of the United States was divinely providential in that, “this New England soil such men would forever rise up ready to fight when need came" (almost assuredly the author was referring to World War II given the 1943 publication). The book even ends with the young teen protagonist dreaming of having risky 18th century surgery on his one mangled hand so he can fire a musket at the British and not with dreams of liberty, egalitarianism, or democracy. Being raised in a family that taught all the children to handle firearms; I quietly asked myself at the time why Johnny couldn’t fire the musket left handed and wrap his bad hand in the strap. Now that I think about it again, such an ending reminds me of those creepy MAGA Christmas Cards with the entire family, including small children, brandishing assault rifles. When I asked Google it looked like the book is still taught unironically to middle schoolers in Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and probably elsewhere. Looking just at the book and its 83 years of continuous use with middle schoolers shows how this theocratic & racist shit that we’re living through in ‘26 has indeed been a long time coming.

Back in that tiny 1995 Texas evangelical classroom, I can remember how big Mrs Love’s eyes were as she told us how God created the US and carried us through 1812, The Civil War and Reconstruction, the gilded age, The Great Depression, and World War II just so the US could be midwife to Israel in the 1940’s and then essentially become Israel’s keeper until rapture. She recounted the parable of the fig in scripture, which to be fair does seem to mention a new Israel but it also says that we cannot know when any of this will be. Yet there Mrs Love stood, telling us (as if it were a cosmic fact) that we’d all have a chance to see God’s kingdom float down to earth being born at this time. Never did I hear anyone mention the separation of church and state.

Nowadays I don’t personally subscribe to the supernatural or theism even if I do still buy into the philosophy of Jesus such that God = Love, Heaven on Earth is just having a beloved egalitarian community according to MLK jr, and Hell is a place where love and life are stamped out like CECOT or a Tehran girls’ school being bombed to distract from the Epstein files. Folks do not have to agree with any of that so long as someone’s personal beliefs make it easier for them to be a good person. That’s all I ask. Which is a lot less than I used to ask as a Southern Baptist or during my time as a militant atheist in the aftermath years of leaving the SBC. Please know that I still carry sorrow for both of these past versions of myself through they are 18 & 23 years gone by now. I personally struggle with hating any and all MAGAs. I also struggle with not returning evil for evil to MAGAs in conversation with them - in person or otherwise. I wish I could say how to talk them out of their deeply insecure and deluded beliefs but it’s more like they just need to get out from under the constant reinforcement of their social indoctrination and then be given time to read and think about it all. For some it’s a prison sentence. For others it’s a lonely illness. The truth is that the Bible is not actually an instruction manual (because of translations, allegory, and internal inconsistencies) and any set of rigid fundamentalist beliefs are inherently both dangerous and cherry picked. They need the time and space to realize such is undeniable. We cannot know how many could ever get out from under MAGA, even under perfect conditions, but I assure you, dear readers, that redemption is possible where there is life - even amongst the hardcore evangelical dummies of MAGA.

~ NK

The detail oriented among you have likely noticed that we went from Vol 4 No 5 to Vol 4 No 7 without bothering with No 6. This is done purposely since I was so out of it after my last surgery that there were two Vol 4 No 3’s such that we’re now catching up numerically. I apologize if this creates any confusion or if any of the content was also muddled. Also the waves of national grief, shock and rage in the last several weeks affected me more than is easy to admit, even to myself.

Speaking of trying to hold it all together, do you know someone who keeps waking up hoping for the felon in the White House to have finally passed away or stroked out triggering of the 25th amendment? I don’t do this yet such morbid yearning is in some ways a sensible hope to go on; for it amounts to a bet on a bodily downfall that’s far more likely to occur than Trump actually giving up the office voluntarily (let alone with grace). Plus I get the emotional draw of wishing for an exit ramp off this Hell bound highway any day now. Yet have we well considered how such a thing might shake out? Please check out this assessment from The Gaslight Report By Dr Frank George:

What Happens When Trump Dies?

Since the initiation of the dumbest war of all time, I am coming back around to the likelihood of impeachment in ‘27 or maybe even sooner because this really is going all kinds of badly for the regime. And they were starting to collapse before that since I don’t believe they have ever deleted a media post because of blowback from racism before (I am referring to Trump’s posting of vid depicting the Obamas as Gorillas).

Right now they are scrambling like a beehive just fell into their campsite. It even looks like there’s a voice call from the Russian FSB/mafia to an administration official to talk about on C-SPAN. And of course there’s the craziest non-war part that I must not go unmarked: we now have our first pieces of direct evidence that Trump 1.0 maybe orchestrated JeffEp’s apparent suicide.

No, really. They drafted the press release for Jeffery Epstein’s 2019 death in government custody a DAY EARLY. It’s being reported in several outlets by now CLICK HERE but to give credit where it’s due, I believe that Aaron Parnas and Meidas Touch were leading on it. The release even read, “Friday, August 9” making a typo seem unlikely. There’s also the likelihood of issues with both the deleted footage and a missing noose that further confounds claims of actual suicide.

Does any of this literally mean that we’ve avoided the related possibilities of civil strife, decades of neigh-inescapable fascism, or perhaps the outright destruction of the federal government? No, of bloody course not; and Trump’s passing away or 25th wouldn’t do that either. Even when the regime is completely out of power, we will only be safe from going down this dark road to a degree, especially when we them accountable in both criminal and civil court. Only after all of the above and then spend a generation or two reforming, rebuilding, educating, and getting folks into therapy will this fight cease to be presently existential. That said, we’ll always need to be warily working on how the nation is run, otherwise the next evil demagogue will be a craftier critter that we might not ever escape. The road will be long & laborious but we CAN earn back some of the international, domestic, institutional, and economic trustworthiness that has been torched on the alter of Trump’s demented & selfish capriciousness. We can have our dignity back as citizens and it gets closer every time a MAGA reforms or an insipid eligible nonvoter wakes up to this reality. A reality that feels more like a fever dream from the depths than whatever delusion it was they were sleeping to.

Oh and let’s please all call our senators regarding this Markwayne Mullen nonsense. It would be Clown Shoe Crazy to install him at DHS.

Take care out there,

NK

What a wildly shitty year it has been since I wrote my first articles on Substack! Surely some good things happened to many of us in that time but I think it’s fair to call it shitty on balance. Was it how you thought it would be? Surely we all had expectations at the conclusion of the ‘24 election. To that end, let us look back a few pieces I did from January ‘25 (in no particular order):

This one by no means predicted the specifics of our newly turbulent world but still I stand by the words, especially the title (click HERE to read my piece from 1/21/2025).

I feel like my snarky and somewhat profane way of projecting hope was born in this concerning the ‘24 election (Click HERE to read ‘No Sense In The Nonsensical’).

This one is about altruistic courage and it’s based directly on an astonishing profile from ProPublica (click HERE for my take and HERE for the original article).

The last two I will attempt to subject you to, dear readers, are scientific instead of political per se and I am proud of them though they weren’t widely shared (Click HERE for ‘Multiverse of Misfortune’ and click HERE for ‘Cape Fitting for Chonkus’).

I hope you understand me looking back a year. I cannot help but wondering this week how I am still scared like I was on Jan 20 of last year; when even now most all of what I publicly hoped for in this series is at least early in the process of collapsing the regime and hopefully the MAGA movement itself. It’s because we are witnessing multigenerational ruin being wrought in real time. Though it’s been decades on end of jingoistic race-baiters on one side and neglectful elites on the other that brought us to this place of grief and strife.

For the far right it’s been a seven decade long labor of hate and selfishness. What passes for the left (Democrats) forgot that their successes were built by unions, people of color, women, naturalized immigrants, and kitchen table issues instead of rich donors. This is such that it will take nothing less than mass multigenerational labors of egalitarianism and altruism to claw our way to a place of peace..

..and even that only starts when we have justice and accountability for this hate-crime spree in place of an administration. And that is the one and only way to pray ourselves out of this purgatory in which we live - unsure of 150 years of progressive progress or democracy itself but also not totally bereft of it. We could potentially spend a long time here; sort of like how Hungary has done.

And no, we cannot tell which way this will go yet. Will we continue to collectively plumb the depths of depravity and allow the regime to provoke civil strife, leading us into outright hell? Or will we allow the angels of justice to lift us back up to the sunshine?

Yes, the regime has been weakened since the shutdown ended and their orange god is dying before our eyes. The JeffEp saga will continue to follow the regime in a potently pernicious way. Congress is showing primordial signs of courage and determination with attempts at ACA and Venezuela war powers votes and now a possible shutdown over ICE. Yes, the killings of Keith Porter, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti and the insidiously evil coverups will haunt the regime (though not in the same way it haunts us). Yes, SCOTUS is almost certain to rule against the regime for tariffs soon. Yes, the polling and recent special elections suggest a historic thrashing for MAGA at the ballot box this year. And yet, I cannot shake the chill of fear and want of certainty. And maybe that’s for the best if we’re to succeed in this.

Ok Noel but what in the name of sweet baby Ghandi do we do to in order to get there? Well, we all do whichever parts suit us and our communities. Protest peacefully, protect the vulnerable, give to individual candidates and nonprofits like the ACLU or Immigrant Advocates and NOT the DNC, volunteer in your community to do any kind of good or for a candidate you believe in, don’t forget to check your registration and vote, get to know the neighbors this year, and lastly remember to watch for things that bear filming and if you do then PLEASE stay back, Don’t heckle/block/interfere, keep the camera still, and then post it without delay. As a disabled blue dot on a limited income, I’m asking that those of you who are able do what marginalized folks like me cannot. Hell, I wouldn’t recommend folks even protest at this point unless they have protective PPE, good health/life insurance, a group or buddy to go with, and bail/lawyer money at the ready.

But whatever you do end up doing, dear readers, do not give up or give in. I promise to at least do that with you.

~NK

Before we get into my idea (which probably isn’t as original as the goofy titular term I used to describe it) I’m gonna be candid: I am still frightened of a fatally wounded regime. Dear Readers, you haven’t heard from me in months again because of poor health but also sometimes I am too frightened to write about it publicly. My silence wasn’t for fear of the regime’s reprisals, for I very much doubt I’ll ever have enough of a following to even be on their radar. That is, I tried to write several articles but was too bloody bothered to have clarity and focus for the dirty rich misers, the vile in their hatred, the corrupt in their dealings, and some poor suckers who want tax policy as if they’re temporarily embarrassed millionaires have ALL joined hands in a vicious and pedantic form of Authoritarianism and it’s abhorrent. Many of us, including myself as a disabled loudmouth, are somewhere down on their list for whatever comes after they start to run out of immigrants and black women with power. As this drags on, how could I hope to help my readers accept or understand this if I was too afraid to look carefully for weeks on end?

I think that like many, the events since the Epstein release bill passed have since renewed my hope. In fact, why be scared at all if they’ve only got a year to go before they’re lame? Seriously! Why not just metaphorically buckle in and accept the existential risk as if it’s a business class on a commercial flight to Rome? Well look at what they did with this year for one. More importantly, how can I possibly predict their final political demise when they didn’t give up power peacefully on January 6, 2021? I figure this time the effort will bifurcate along their usual low-down dirty tricks and the big one they’re honestly afraid to try such that they will have a two-fold approach to affecting the ‘26 election. The first part will be MAGA seeking again to fraudulently manipulate the election throughout its entirety like in 2020. The Regime is using all the same old election stealing tactics and as usual they all occur outside of the ballot box. Voter intimidation (perhaps using military, militia, or ICE), Voter ID laws, throwing folks off the voter rolls for whatever reason, attacking mail-in voting (they will likely plow forward with Putin’s advice to ban it though it will hurt them on balance), polling places moving/closing early/long lines in blue neighborhoods, graft, gerrymandering, the possibility of more fake electors, plus the media billionaires in their pocket who can create fake polls/consensus or propaganda with ease and push it in front of millions. So here we are. None of those things can really stop us but they do amount to major headwinds such that the STRUGGLE WILL BE REAL yet it can be won and done. I am not a particularly religious man but I do have faith that we will for we are likely to be well set up to defend against the first fold of their election interventions since there’s places that have already organized lawyers, non-partisan observers, and volunteers in preparation. Folks like Marc Elias are drawing blood from the regime with civil liberties litigation all the time. We can fight them on such battlefields and win resoundingly.

Yet that brings us to the second part of their fell midterm machinations. As the election approaches, it will become tempting for remaining MAGA loyalists to bunker themselves in DC as they cancel or delay the federal midterm elections with claims of security or war powers to prevent it all going catastrophically badly for them despite all the aforementioned dirty trickery. So long as we hold a semblance of a midterm, this resurgent hatred of the right and the ignorant insipidity of the eligible nonvoters from ‘24 will NOT last through next year’s elections; for fascist regimes are but brittle & fragile things. This one has a dying leader with a soon-to-be-divorced VP who doesn’t command the base. The Jeff-Ep saga will continue to both cause and expose rot in the Trump regime. No one tells hard truths in the stench of the Oval Office, making any problem a blind alley with only obfuscation & provocative cruelty to address it such that most all the regime can and will accomplish will be widespread corruption & multigenerational ruin. The electorate will see even more of that shake out in the real world in the coming months. All of which would sound very good indeed except that it also will further tempt them to wade into the abyss of canceling the midterms.

It is of course somewhat unclear what happens in the event of a cancelled midterm since a number of important initial conditions are unknown at this writing. War with Nigeria, Canada, Venezuela, or Denmark (via Greenland) could all be possible predications for it. China finally invading Taiwan is always remotely possible, for that matter. The US Invading any of those countries would likely create an insurgency and I would even venture that the Canadians’ resulting insurgency would be deeply violent well beyond both MAGA’s expectations and the US’ national taste for it. Or there could be some sort of international or domestic inciting event that ¼ of the way justifies it, false flag or no. To make matters worse, the act of cancelling the election itself could easily trigger secession and civil strife. Obviously we must continue to fight peacefully using all the hopes, tools, and allies that can be assembled. Some states are already preparing for a newly absent or adversarial federal government in acts of ‘soft secession’ like setting up their own CDC or passing state laws against egregious ICE tactics. There’s no shadow government or capitol (kind of like the American government in Exile in Canada in The Handmaid’s Tale) yet but some of what we hear between blue governors sounds a bit like such is on the horizon. Please know that I HATE the idea of war with everything I am and will never push for violence of any kind but I do like our chances in the event of a shooting war between MAGA and the rest of us. Team Democracy has the numbers, education, plenty of veterans & guns, courage of the heart, international support (hopefully), and the truth on our side. Also, most of the poorest US states are red and didn’t economic insecurities doom the confederacy?

But Noel, what about the self-fulfilling clickbait, could that help us weaken them and shine a light in the darkness? I could imagine definitions that would refer to either the Streisand effect or maybe sidewalk videos of glamour goatwalking going viral across rural American towns from what originated as a wry cartoon meme. But no, this is about not limiting our own party’s power and footing in the house. We don’t have to be afraid to impeach him (as many democrats and USA Today’s opinion page are this week). We only need to avoid sending the articles over to the senate before we are sure of a conviction. I want the house to pontificate, add new charges, call more witnesses, and read more into the record EVERY WEEK. I don’t care if the impeachment has 100+ charges on it. Just let it be the drip-drip-drip of his waning power alongside the Jeff-Ep saga. I know it will hopefully seem pointlessly performative until it’s not, but I don’t see why we should be afraid to try it. I mean, 100+ charges sounds crazy but the orange clown already has 37 felony convictions, right?

Best,

nk

May that this wishful message has found you well amidst a summer of Malthusian public health policies, a tragic mass shooting that will haunt us as a nation, and armed Troops marching under huge pictures of Trump in DC. Seriously, I hope and expect that many of you are doing well in your part of this everlasting gobstopper of a shitstorm. And that’s great! Just imagining it leaves my heart buoyant and hopeful. I only ask that you remember that many of our nation’s prisoners/detainees, disabled, impoverished, undocumented, elderly, and children cannot shine with courage & joy in the way that you can if you so choose🤘

For those of you that aren’t doing that well, I am right there with you. My health is suffering for a number of reasons and it’s been day by day for some time. Plus my state of Arkansas is indeed racing to try to be first & fastest off the cliff of sanity, along with many of the other red states. With public schools being bled by a slew of new Christian Nationalist charter schools, shameful ballot item shenanigans, and a new AI center in my city of Little Rock; it would be easy to give up on this place. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had some good protests and will have some fresh candidates for ‘26. There’s hope to be had and I can see that; yet I am simply too downtrodden to feel it lately. Fam, I am not always so self-aware or capable of coping. I imagine I am not alone in this either. So please team blue, continue to share all the JOY of a good protest or of Mamdani’s scavenger hunt AND courage like Tina Cook and all the folks documenting ICE from a safe distance. It all matters because it helps those of us at the edges go on m, it sometimes slows them down, and it wordlessly implores others who are able to act in kind!

When spiraling in a state of fear or despair, one is quick to jump at shadows or to latch onto things they might not otherwise. Dear Readers, I am as sorry as anyone that we cannot type a cheat code into reality to pull a final Mortal Kombat move out of our collective asses that either finishes the enemy off right now or at least ensures victory later so that we might relax and look away. We cannot paint ourselves into that corner of want and circumstance. By all means look away whenever you need to and get all the rest and relaxation you need. Take a vacay if you want to and are able. Just come back when you are strong and ready for more: this resistance is both how we live now and how we survive in the end.

I get how badly many folks want some kind of righteous juggernaut to float down from the sky or rise up from the bones of the earth like Godzilla. Yet that feeling of being down at the bottom of a barrel looking up only amounts to an openness to folly, like a freshly grieving Houdini getting roped in by a psychic. I am not going to get into specific personalities or debate policy in this piece. I only ask that you check yourself, dear readers, and ask if you would support certain people or things in a less desperate time, and if so then perhaps the only difference in the you from then and the you now is indeed desperation and not righteousness.

Around February when it became apparent what exact flavor and level of fuckery we were going to endure for this election cycle, I have clung to some simple truths amidst all the suffering and spectacle. One is that the Trump Regime is driven by folks so deeply hateful & insecure and some even outright megalomaniacal that we shouldn’t project too much thoughtful planning, sanity, nor subtlety into what they do. These folks are genuinely fucked up. Their base is crazy to look at this demented clown and think ‘4-D Chess’ and dammit so are we.

That is, Trump isn’t cleverly curating an economic & agricultural failure with Mass deportations when they earnestly & devoutly believe that remaking the nation according to White Christian Nationalism would bring on the good times. Nor will they very soon, for the economic pain will be seen and accepted as the cost for the country they want for true believers in MAGA so the right folks are winning. Nor would Trump fret that the trade war will turn a recession into stagflation when he has ‘Voldemort’ Navarro the plucky maverick Harvard economist to encourage the raving madness and grift of it. Of course I call Navarro ‘Voldemort’ because he famously made an anagram his own name in order to fabricate a source in an academic article. Honestly, even if you get into the weeds to try to see the trade war as a way to shake countries or companies down or to help Tesla; It’s still madness under those lenses or any other. (Incidentally, I have to wonder if Lutnick is in the Jeff-Ep files, having been his longtime neighbor and now confidant to his bestie, Donald Jumbo Trump.)

The second is that we face a cult defined by selfishness more than anything else. The fascist cruelty is the point (if not grift) and their hate & fear of others is their guiding star. But when you get to know a few of them, it’s the selfishness that they all have in common. Whether we’re talking about a 24 YO man who wants tax policy like he’s a temporarily embarrassed millionaire when he cannot hold a job and lives in mom’s basement; the Ammosexual (Ammosexual is not a safe or sane kink!) who ‘needs’ 20,000 rounds and a rack of AR’s and AK’s, the selfish knaves of the elite who also wanted (and OC got) their tax break, the true believers who want America to look like and believe like THEM, or all the wannabe Trumps and ideologues that are in charge of the Trump Regime. All of them are selfish down to their insecure & miserable core. Yes, I know there were also a number of low-information dupes who voted for Trump in ‘24 but I think they’ve already peeled off; given 35-37% approval from the two newest polls.

To summarize what we have so far:

We face a TAXONOMY of selfish and screwy stooges and not a redneck monolith. Plus enough of those in the regime are either ideological hate-eaters like Steven Miller or simply unwilling to tell Trump what’s really going on, making every last problem a blind alley. Which I believe is more than sufficient to run the country right off an economic cliff without them so much as touching the brakes on their worst policies or for much of the regime to even realize the depth of their folly. See, racists and bigots don’t stop to wonder if maybe they’re JUST HATEFUL ASSHOLES when most of the folks around reject their seemingly drivel-driven hatred. Instead, they think they’re right and the soft-headed liberals refuse to see the reality of it. Such is the insecure heart of the unbound narcissism that wrecks both told & untold havoc in American life now.

As bad as that combination sounds, Dear Readers, I find hope in it when I sew it all together. For a cult defined by selfishness cannot subsist on bread & water alone. I know that sounds simplistic but just let it roll around in the mind a bit. Are older MAGAs at home on a fixed income gonna think stagflation is funny when they’re rationing their pills? Do all the military MAGAs want to pick up trash, assuming that trend continues? Are Wall Street MAGAs gonna like imploding markets? A few that are farmers or business owners that hired migrants have already found out, and they’re quite angry. I trust that more and more will come to the party as the fires of chaos spread.

I do have one quick brushback before we let this be. While the dupes, knaves, and tech/culture bros will likely all finish their turn on Trump by ‘26, the evangelicals will NOT. They think they’re fulfilling prophecy and will likely sacrifice a great deal for the regime before even questioning it for the very first time.

Please do not think I look down on folks who take care of theirs at home with income from Substack when I say that mine is 100% free forever, for mine is published irregularly with neither staff nor production value. That said, how about a free subscription to some of the snarkiest snark in the Trumpocalypse?

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I leave you with well wishes from Little Rock

-NK

Please do not think I look down on folks who take care of theirs at home with income from Substack when I say that mine is 100% free forever, for mine is published irregularly with neither staff nor production value. That said, how about a free subscription to some of the snarkiest snark in the Trumpocalypse?

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Now, on to the important announcement:

May this spark of curiously resilient hope find you as well as one might be found in the morass and miasma of these unholy times; for I still think we’re gonna make it both out of the boiling pot in ‘26 and out of the vampire infested woods in ‘28. I say this knowing they’re trying to cover-up Epstein and screw with the election as I write this. I also know that they will continue to turn the US military against ourselves, possibly invade Canada, and maybe throw down Martial Law at precisely the opportune time. Yet we can easily know both all of this and surmise that Trump 2.0 is almost certainly bound to go down in (hopefully metaphorical) flames.

Yeah, right. If you say so. Thanks, Noel. Cheers for performative hopefulness, Bruv!

OK, so maybe I should get to the part about WHY even in some kind of Little River Band-, medical cannabis-, and union-made beer-induced fugue state, like a mental Chorus of Horus, Krishna, & Mithra, would I lead with us making it out of this national nightmare without a bunch of lame-sounding qualifiers all suggesting that it’s hanging delicately on the threads of folks of every kind of ordinary valiantly voting, donating, and organizing with nonviolence? AND say it in all seriousness?

Well, I say we’re gonna live in the light again one day because with the help of independent media the fires of resistance are already breathing and growing like they’re come down from on high, MAGA is worse than ever at any kind of governance, the old man is declining in front of us like a sand castle going out with the tide such that his usual bullshit isn’t working, and of course We The People won’t give up, Gawds-dammit.

Yet this will not be an unscathed sidestep from the Abyss of a Trumpian Dynasty in America. Oh no. Yet this will still be miles NAY, Astronomical Units (I stop short of light years) better than the Divisive, Disturbed, and Dumb Abysssal depths of MAGA’s depravity given decades. In my mind’s eye, the Abyss of a Trumpian Dynasty is kinda like if all of us were somehow being forever forced to live our lives as a minor characters on Duck Dynasty but with more substance abuse, health issues, jingoism, and creepiness. Especially now with RFK, Jr looking at historically bad public health decisions around the world like ignoring the AIDS epidemic, Churchill’s ignoring air pollution in a weather vortex, or the Tuskegee Experiments and saying, “Hold my Baby Bear Tallow Smoothie” as he cancels a half billion dollars in the latest vaccines that would have protected our population from suffering, disability, and death.

So no, do not take me to be malnourished in terms of the latest disturbing developments or a polyanna in terms of the effects of bad policy that’s inevitably gonna be baked in before we can vote them out. I promise you, dear readers, I peered into the Abyss well enough before rhetorically dismissing it as a second term catastrophe of criminality & cruelty. Rather than Trump 2.0 being our collective fate until the cows of sanity come home and the pigs of common decency again take flight; I believe we will instead get to rebuild, reform, and learn to live with Dumb & Evil as part of our national history and consciousness. I cannot show that hope to be a fact but It is my devout and earnest belief.

That conviction, along with some humor, personal notes, and bite-sized analysis is the sum of what I’ve shared with everyone since I started publishing on Substack back in January. I am still frightened; sometimes I am scared by the regime’s continued criminal cruelty, power consolidation, and destruction of the administrative state. But most of the things that I am afraid will lead us back onto the trail to the Abyss don’t come from the enemy’s camp.

Usually this line of fretting is about the unacceptable nature of violence and violent rhetoric in this fight. A few of you may remember the piece I did a while back on the notion, (CLICK HERE to read ‘Red-Hot Despair or a Fed?’). While we’re on the subject, I really should update that piece with a 3rd category for the social media world: Faceless trolls who call for violence for clicks and giggles.

Yet that’s not quite what I meant when I titled this piece after a 1991 video game that’s a bit of a touchstone for the males of my generation. Cecil, the main character, is a dark knight in a military that has lately become an oppressive regime. He took up the dark sword years ago as it seemed the best way to serve his liege and the people. But now the king has taken a dark turn and the kingdom with it. Cecil’s speaking up buys him immediate exile, his lifetime of service be damned.

Finding a diverse group of allies in his exile, Cecil is able to fight the forces of evil to a draw but only just and is then marooned on a beach alone for his efforts. The sage assures him that gathering more power as a dark night will continue to only beat back the encroaching evil to a draw at best. There is another way, a harder way. The sage’s now increasingly bright-eyes had never seen a dark knight with as much light in their heart as Cecil does, but even he seems a little skeptical as he suggests it: Go climb Mt Ordeals to become a Paladin, a holy warrior of the light.

Even in success, this means Cecil must start over completely. His long honed skills and increasingly impressive equipment as a dark knight are inherently a part of the problem and must be abandoned, even though the dark sword can in fact dispatch many evil things. Of course the game gives Cecil no choice at that point. There’s nowhere left to walk on the Dark Knight path.

This is where I feel like we are right now in reality. The governors of NY and CA are threatening to use UNDEMOCRATIC and AUTHORITARIAN tactics as a form of reciprocity against MAGA republicans in Texas. That’s picking up the dark sword, Dear Readers.

That said, I applaud JB Pritzger’s leadership on the matter. He admits that while the US House of Representatives as a whole is gerrymandered to the right, trying to do more of the same isn’t where he’s at right now. Hell, he called his own state’s previously passed blue-leaning gerrymandering the work of Kindergartners on Colbert this week.

Yes, the relentless fuckers in the regime are trying to do shady crap for ‘26. They do that often. It only means we need to have a higher level of morale, integrity demonstrated in shoe leather politics, the courage for real change, and the wisdom to avoid oligarchic donations.

Here’s to our hearts proving worthy to being bearers of the light, and not just well-meaning bearers of darkness!

-NK

I think we can mostly all agree that this campfire has caught the big log in the pit and there will be singing (leaking), braying denials, and endless jabber over this until there is some sense of transparency and accountability; but why is this so?

Let’s first talk a little about the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and its long time (but not forever) owner, Rupert Murdoch. Reading from slightly older editorial positions the WSJ staked out in direct opposition to the Trump regime since they took power in January, it’s easy to see the reasons as to why the WSJ did it: The Trade war, mass deportation, the Big Bonkers Bill, gutting the administrative state, and ESPECIALLY for threatening Jerome Powell and therefore the independence & effectiveness of The Federal Reserve. Plus I suspect Trump personally offended both Murdoch and the editorial board by demands to quash the story, and it looks like Rupert, knowing that he’s taken down governments before, is going to channel Harvard and not Columbia. This was but an opening salvo to fan the flames and it’s coming from what’s been the voice of western capitalism since before living memory. Fox News & Fox Business haven’t turned on him quite yet but I suspect they will do so well before the end of this unholy year. Perhaps they’re waiting until the damned tool of a fool pardons Maxwell. However it shakes out, Dear Readers, I promise you that there are some incendiary rounds left in Murdoch’s metaphorical gun.

And no, none of this (including the positions they staked out since January) was done out of concern for what’s morally repugnant or framed for the plight of non-elites. It’s because all these things really are remarkably bad for the economy, which translates to being bad for the economically elite, the ownership class who read and trust the WSJ. This one little article about a birthday letter was the deafening public notice that their monster has decidedly turned on all of them.

Ok, but what about Trump’s base? They mostly don’t read the WSJ and were starting to doubt and waiver before it came out. And yes, I know we’ve all heard or uttered the words, “it’s their worldview” and both Trump, the cabinet, and the populace has incessantly talked this up for YEARS on end. Plus, the doofy democrat establishment unfortunately saw fit to let this rot continue unabated while they were in charge so it’s now become the only bipartisan issue there is in America.

While all that is certainly true and we could even throw in the desperately loud contributions of Musk since he was thrown under the bus for the failures of DOGE; yet it’s still not quite sufficient for me as to why Trump’s powers of hate-baiting, obnoxious obfuscation, and goofy verbal weaving aren’t magically saving him once again. It doesn’t help that he’s more demented by the day, oh no. But that’s just the reason Trump cannot quite make them let it slide despite themselves. The reason they will never fully let this go is because this (along with abortion and the war on woke) is ESSENTIAL in defining MAGA as white knights and the Democrats as those who would let children come to harm. It’s what lets them sleep with Heinrich Himmler-level cruelty at home and abroad. It’s who they fancy themselves to be on a deep level in the mirror every morning. Now Trump’s desperate coverup is necessarily exposing that as an obvious and stupid lie.

See, the folks on the right aren’t just now seeing that the emperor’s perverted ass is as naked, poop-smeared, and whiny as a wee babe; for with this they’ll ALL feel the cold breeze from the loss their collective fig leaf. 2016 was a long time ago and so of course they’re quite used to the rest of us insisting upon what a a mix of derp, hate, and selfishness that MAGA truly is. Yet NOW in 2025 to finally begin to see it in themselves must be both excruciating and galling, like a fart in the air line running to a diving helmet (click HERE to check out my piece from January about this).

Hey guys! I don’t even do paid subscriptions AT ALL so there is a 0.00% chance that you will be charged for subscribing to my work:

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Oh and I ask once more that you guys please remain wonderfully supportive and patient with the timeliness of my work here on Substack. I lost my mother a week ago today and my health still takes a lot of my time and mind away in ways.

Please enjoy the roaring campfire whose flames are licking & roasting the regime until next time, Dear Readers.

~NK

Apologies for not publishing as often lately. I am between knee surgeries and there’s a lot of ouch and brain fog in a week. For what it’s worth you guys still got what you paid for 😉 since I don’t even offer paid subscriptions though my account has been eligible for a while. I may offer that one day but it will only be in the event that the comment sections become uncontrollably nasty, because I doubt even well heeled WHADBAGs (Click HERE to see the piece that explains this acronym) would want to give $5 to a liberal firebrand. They only occasionally seem to find me and get bad-kind-of-weird here on Substack so far. Besides, I am just an aging, divorced, overeducated, and disabled hipster with a modest readership; so I doubt the need to paywall the comments will come about anytime soon, if ever. Even in that event, all of my work will remain freely available here on Substack. Oh and since that means there’s a 0.00% chance you’ll accidentally be charged, how about a free subscription?

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Enough business and snarky terminology, Noel! What have you got for us this time?

Now that the light between Elon and the administration has become a blinding solar flare (Click HERE to see how I called for Elon’s downfall on February 10th of this unholy year, long before most anyone else said it); I figure it’s time to announce the next Evil Vampire Oligarch to go down in flames as they, like Elon, will get thrown under the bus for the crimes they’re committing (and planning to commit) on behalf of the administration itself. And again like Elon, he is not without influence and resources. That will again make it bloody interesting when Trump will becomes more and more desperate to play out his messianic complex when Evangelicals start to waiver. And waiver they will as every icky thing about JD ‘Loveseat’ Vance is even more prominent in this fella. And this thing with stolen data ending up in Russia and at his company will see his homosexuality, toxic politics, and odd story profiled in full color in the coming weeks. Perhaps the handwriting on the wall will again become a sham presser, with another gilded key to nowhere.

Ok great work bruv, but who the hell is it?

The company he owns is named Palantir, which was originally the name of the magical crystal balls used by Sauron in Lord of The Rings to marshal forces and neutralize those who might otherwise have stood firmly against evil. Snark and hyperbole aside; Peter Thiel basically thinks he can steal everyone’s data, make the growing militia movement (AKA ‘Gravy Seal Team Six’) and an increasingly unhealthy & uneducated population into his orcs and make himself a sort of eternal Sauron over the continent through a kind of personal vampirism (Seriously! Please click HERE to see the piece explaining what flavor of unholy batshit they’re really into). And like a lot of awful figures from the last 80 years of American history; he is connected to the CIA. Yet I don’t want you, Dear Readers, to think of that demonic dipshit choreographer of Goose-Stepping as a Voldemort or a Sauron, even though I kinda just made him out to be exactly that. Instead think of him as the Neo-Nazi leader in The Blues Brothers (Click HERE to see the clip from the film); only we haven’t gotten to the part to where he’s driven into the water. Oh and if you haven’t already read it, my piece on how a jingoistic White ‘Christian’ Nationalism and not love of money/power is the evil beating heart of it all is probably the best thing I’ve written on Substack so please Click HERE to read Vol 2 No 4, A Feature Not a Gimmick.

Hell, I figure Peter Thiel infected Mark Zuckernut with the same vampirism (not that Mark Zuckerberg was ever that great as Facebook was originally a way to aggregate and popularize the objectification of women on campus) as Thiel was the first big outside investor for Facebook and likely led them into stealing data and selling it to Cambridge Analytica in order to let others do EXACTLY what Palantir is wanting to do now but on a much grander scale.

Holy Expletives Falling Dreadfully Short of Describing an epic SHITSHOW!

It’s frightening, I know. I am frightened myself but there’s still hope. Don’t forget that Thiel doesn’t have a following, a megaphone, or a pocketbook quite like Musk’s. Also I am seeing a steady trickle of folks from Bernie Sanders all the way to Nick Fuentes denouncing this latest daylight robbery of America. I THINK that We The People will reject this along with Trump in time to still have a nation though it will be a deeply divided, damaged, and tarnished one. Also remember that there are some very clever tech people on team democracy too! Anonymous the hacker collective and Canadian Signals Intelligence are two good examples. Plus these data centers have real world addresses. We could protest & boycott the towns hosting them or perhaps drum up legal challenges based on environmental concerns for the centers themselves or the constitutionality of the mess as a whole. The legal part of our fight looks to party hinge on what I call ‘The Big Bonkers Bill’ or ‘Disgusting Abomination’ as Elon calls it. So get in this fight if you haven’t before it passes the Senate! Otherwise we may have the fell skies and deadly famine of Mordor about us for an age of the Earth.

Please take care until next time,

~nk

Please accept my warmest greetings to you and yours while navigating the society-wide swaths of industrial strength crazy and casually callus cruelty that currently constitutes our layer of the multiverse (Click HERE for my piece on that notion ‘Multiverse of Madness’).

I tell you that this will in time be over. For no matter how far they get in their bare-knuckle bonkers plan for ‘25, the intended destination of a moronic mishmash of Gilead, Skynet, and the USSR is inherently brittle. I assure you fam; all that we need happen then is for the people to refuse to cooperate and it all goes from ‘Making GREAT’ to a swiftly falling sack of warm & pungent from the tail end of a GREAT Dane. I know this is hard to see from the bottom of this hole we lie in. If one looks closely, this administration has begun of shambling and dissembling instead of strutting and bellowing as they did on January 20th of this year when the man-child once again raised his itty hand to meal-mouth yet another quickly broken oath. For a bit of perspective, check out the especially snarky piece I penned the very next day (Click HERE to read ‘Fart in a Diving Helmet’). Only parts of what I alluded to has come to pass yet I still stand by the idea that Trump 2.0 is well on their way to metaphorically becoming the title of that piece.

Now, I hope you’ll agree that the electorate has a solid chance of successfully shrugging off this DERP-y evil before we’re all old or dead. For what it’s worth, I see Trumpers losing badly in a local school board election near me in Conway, AR. Kinda like the new Mayor-elect of Omaha. The infighting at The White House is starting to look like The Road House. Ms Ozturk is free. The Pope stands with us (unless we’re playing against a Chicago baseball team anyway).

This is all before the economic chickens roost recessionary-style or worse. I know it’s tempting for some of us to wring our hands and fret that even a recession or depression won’t loose the fascist grip on the nation. I encourage you to ignore that idea. Many Trump voters, donors, and activists aren’t so hot on economic calamity; some of them are already being peeled off by the trade war and the dismal failure of DOGE. When and if you run into them, I hope you can channel John McClaine from Die Hard as he watches a fellow officer suffer the rude awakening from quiet Christmas to war zone, “Welcome to the party, pal!” See, I am not ready to forgive them for voting for Trump ‘24 (or even for sitting out the ‘24 election). So let’s just politely let them in the tent and hope that some-effing-how a bit of grace bubbles to the top when this is all over.

Come to think of it; forgiving the repentant WHADBAGs (White Hateful Angry Dumb Boys And Girls), dupes, and knaves would be easier if they burn all of their Trump merch and delete their X & TruthSocial accounts. See, I am thinking that we need a rebrand on a national scale. I don’t even wanna look at a bald eagle rendition anymore. How about the wild turkey like Benjamin Franklin suggested? We might be less tempted to delve into jingoistic militarism if we see ourselves as a flock of turkeys gobbling & 💩-ing and not a squadron of eagles on the horizon. Oh and we’re gonna have to change the flag anyway since a return to democracy would eventually find Puerto Rico, D.C., and possibly Samoa, the Virgin Islands, and Guam all becoming states. I say we use the Serapis flag. It’s got history going back to 1777 when John Paul Jones captured the HMS Serapis and it’s a lot more BLUE.

If you’re a regular reader and know how given to snark and humor I tend to be, you might still be looking for the joke. There isn’t one. It’s real and important to both hold the criminals accountable and to nationally and permanently distance ourselves from well, the present, which will one day be a past that we can bin and not wear round our necks. So to quote Spaceballs, When will THEN be NOW?

Well, I dunno. It depends on us. I SO want this present to pass yet I am afraid to see how it shakes out too, for they may kill Habeas Corpus before the end. Which makes me nervous like a dog trying to pass peach pits. Maybe this is all overly hopeful. Perhaps we’re stuck being Trump subjects until he dies 10 years from now. Click HERE to see my piece on this! I don’t think that’ll be our fate but I figured we might as well address the potential Pollyanna in the room. Whatever our future, I believe that we shall fight on and on as I badly quote Churchill. Until next time, Dear Readers.

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We will get to the wee mechanical aeronauts in a moment. Please allow me to first set the tone with my twenty-three second original composition, a minor interlude if you will (Click HERE). In my humble opinion as the amateur musician behind it, it has the right amount of sweetness and technicality yet posted alone as an interlude it leaves the listener wanting. This interlude of course works nicely sandwiched between grunge and Pop-Punk covers with my new and upcoming garage band, The Laughing Academy. The band’s name is an antiquated euphemism for a mental ward; which checks out since four of the five members are neurodivergent (And NO, I am obviously NOT the one normal-brained member of the group).

See Dear Readers, I have become concerned that much like the above sonic interlude on a late ‘70’s Rickenbacker bass guitar, some of my open letters are simply too short to be as good as they are. I think perhaps it was simply habit from my education. Anyone else with a High School Diploma from a public school in North Carolina will remember the 5-7 paragraph statewide literature essay exam from sophomore year. The brilliant teacher we were lucky to have at Brevard Senior High School in Transylvania County used episodes of The Simpsons to explain literary concepts in preparation for it and most every juicy morsel of it stuck. I suppose the word economy and paragraph count required became the underpinning upon which I construct a point or tell a story for well.. a lifetime so far. Yet like my critique of the essay exam itself back in the 90’s, it seems arbitrary to aim for a specific word or paragraph count. Therefore, in the future I promise to never stop short of saying everything that I think needs to be said. Oh and my warmest thanks for the feedback that brought this notion to my attention. Everyone is always welcome to publicly post feedback in comments here on Substack or Blue Sky. Even if it’s to say I laid an egg! It really does help on my end. Also, how about subscribing for free? My account is a new and burgeoning one and I don’t even have paid subscriptions available so there is 0.00% chance you will accidentally get charged for this:

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Now, where have the titular untethered tiny robots flown to? If you would like to see the paper, click HERE)

I figured what better to go with concerns about the size of my posts than a paper about tiny flying robots that are about the size (9.4 mm) and weight (21 mg) of grandpa’s blood pressure pills. They have had diminutive robot flyers for a while but now they are untethered to any wire or frame. THAT’S RIGHT BABY! Now the bitty bots are live and unplugged like all the great bands on MTV in the 90’s. You might be wondering how they were able to get the lil’ buggars to lift, turn, and stabilize without a wire if the old ones all needed one, huh?

Battery Design?

NOPE.

Mechanical design or miniaturization maybe?

NOPE.

Materials?

MOPE.

Waving a wand while singing Freebird by Skynard?

GAWDS NO!

These dainty copters are powered by magnetic fields and are controlled by both those same fields and the gyroscopic force from its rotary assembly that provides lift. I see where they tried some light powered ones too, but they lacked the umm.. I guess I will call it robot ‘piloting skills’? One of the things I find interesting about both powering and controlling a robot of any kind with magnetic waves is that it is difficult to stop the magnetic waves themselves. Yeah, superconduction, active wave cancellation, or some metal plating can act as shielding, ‘short-circuiting’ the wave lines in a field but all are prohibitively expensive.

And yet even having it explained, I am left with a sense of wonder. I think that wonder is partly because it reminds me of a magical scene from the STUNNING anime Spirited Away by Miyazaki (click HERE). Oh and incidentally I also recommend a few other of Miyazaki’s works: Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Porco Rosso, The Cat Returns, My Neighbor Totoro, and Howl’s Moving Castle. These are all a REAL treat AND in my opinion as a father of 2 kids nearing 8&10 YO are OK for all but the smallest and most sensitive of minds to enjoy. Please check these films out! ESPECIALLY if you’re a fussy old fuddy-duddy who is SURE they won’t like it.

Well, Dear Readers you will have to rock 🤘 on without me until next time. Be safe and well in all your goings and comings.

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I am cautiously excited fam! There’s been a change in the winds, allowing the embers to glow. We must shelter them from the wind and carefully stoke the glowing embers of hope and indignation but YES the resistance is now alive in every state and even in the US senate, thanks to Cory Booker and others. DOGE is a dismal failure at this point. Rethuglicans are barely electable in previously safe Florida districts with 1200% margins in campaign cash. Wisconsin, I’ve never so badly wanted to share some laughs, microbrew, and songs. All of that makes up the political half of why I am here today to give you the VERY BEST of news: We are about to see the downfall of Musk (skuM). I first called for him to meet the underside of a bus on 2/10/2025.

Then again on 2/18/2025 as it became obvious that DOGE was the arm through which Trump 2.0 would grab the 3rd rail..

..which I called for more generally on 2/13/2025

Don’t forget that Tesla faces a margin call around $114. Let me lay it out NERDY for you, Dear Readers:

3,198,000,000 outstanding shares

Elon Musk is purported to own 12.8%.

So ~409,344,00 shares.

If we assume that he secured the entire 44B with all his shares then 107.49 would be the 100% equity point.

Which is in the ballpark of the $114 share price that Newsweek reports as a margin call price. As far as I can tell, the difference is that their analytics suggest X is less than worthless whereas I assumed it to be worthless exactly. And they may be right! At the writing of this, there is word that the EU is weighing a fine of €1,000,000 against X.

I would also note how interesting and irregular it is that it’s been reported that the company (Tesla) is MAYBE missing 1.4B dollars? Which happens to be how much Musk (skuM) owed the Chinese government for his factory. Perhaps he had to pay up when the military intelligence didn’t come through? Such might be like number of licks 👅 to get to the center of a tootsie-pop: the world may never know. What I can say with confidence is that the company is a zombie already. The timing of its final cratering is subject to a kind of self-denying prophecy in the market until they finish realizing that Musk has killed the brand and the robotaxi is just as much marketing schtick as Mars is. Of course, I wouldn’t be the first to suggest that Musk’s fate is inexorably linked to the Tesla stock price.

Will he face prison or deportation? I really have no effing idea, fam. I hope so. But if anyone says they know so, they are 💩-filled for sure.

Be safe and keep the faith in our democracy!

~nk

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For this one, I want to spend a minute explaining the change in terminology from ‘Rethuglicans’ to ‘WHADBAGs’ and to those machinations we will add a tour of the ALWAYS snarky and sometimes prescient Pieces I have written so far in this series.

White

Hateful

Angry

Dumb

Boys

And

Girls

WHADBAG

So yes, I am now changing my pointed and properly pejorative term for our dim-witted yet well heeled & armed political rivals. Rethuglicans are now WHADBAGs. I wanted it to better reflect the beating black heart of barbarism that ails my country, which is of course a jingoistic white ‘Christian’ fascism (CLICK to see my Piece on this) But that doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue, huh? 

See folks, if you can’t easily and intelligibly yell it in traffic at one of these PansyPanzers as it sits molting its shiny skin; it’s not a good euphemism. Let’s not get too into the weeds of it but because of bad history education and overuse, ‘Nazi’ isn’t hitting like it should. ‘Repuglican’, ‘Rethuglicans’, and ‘MAGAt’ all look better on paper than they sound in traffic. Any permutation of the three words ‘f¥€ker’, ‘fascist’, and ‘swine’ seems to annoy them well enough but I worry that it doesn’t quite get the point of the pointy white hat and robe across.

So please if you will, Dear Readers, can we try using the term WHADBAGs both IRL and online for the next couple months? Let’s have a sort of communal test drive of the word. Its not like I can claim that my new snarky insult used collectively will summon us to a Non-💩 universe (CLICK HERE for my playful multiverse Piece) but perhaps we CAN see if it helps just a little in telling the brutal truth to the ugly powers that are becoming.

Oh and can we please stop yammering about the election? I know it’s not everyone at this point but do still see folks poking and picking at the 2024 Presidential Election as if they’re 9 YO that CANNOT stay away from the nasty scab on their elbow. I suggest that we leave it to history. We sound too much like them with their big lie from 2020 and I cannot imagine an upside to the optics of having our own tinfoil hat brigade talking about system hacking when the only real voter suppression and intimidation was done, as always, in the light of day (please CLICK HERE to see my open letter on this).

It may also be of interest to check out the first letter of the series where I assign myself the job of disseminating hope and snark (CLICK HERE to see Vol 1 No 1)

COURAGE will determine the fate of our nation more than laws, institutions, leaks, or economic fallout. (CLICK HERE for my Piece on the two types of courage). In a closely related notion, some of us, like Chuck Schumer for an egregious example, are too mired in a kind of Learned Helplessness to see courage for what it is (CLICK HERE for my 1st piece on learned helplessness). Later on I realized that some of the folks on the left calling for violence were a indignant version of this (CLICK HERE for the Piece on Red-Hot Despair)

I really ought to do some more science and tech Pieces. They garner the least views of my publications but I am honestly quite proud of them.

(CLICK HERE for Cape Fitting for CHONKUS)

(CLICK HERE for Which Bird Will They Listen to)

(CLICK HERE for a bit on TRANSHUMANISM)

Oh and what if I am wrong? That is, what if my country is ultimately no more and all of my hopes that I’ve written about since January turn out to be a vanity project? Well, I say there is still a chance for the dream if not the country. (CLICK HERE to see what in the Sam Neil I am talking about)

Oh and let me take a minute to brag on my tiny bit of prescience. The most specifically predictive one (CLICK HERE) is when I wrote on 2/13/2025 that Trump 2.0 would soon grab the 3rd rail with both hands AND that it would still be hot in 2025. These two, (HERE) and (HERE), are calls starting from 2/10/2025 for Elon to meet the underside of a bus for the dismal failure of DOGE. Oh and much of it has not yet come to pass but I still stand by every last word of the piece I wrote on 1/21/2025 (HERE) about how Trump 2.0 would go. It’s only mildly prescient at this point but my piece on Tariffs & Deportations is HERE.

To be fair there are two Pieces that have not aged well in the weeks since. HERE is the one that is me nearly panicking about war; THANKFULLY the Signal scandal has since stymied such plans of conquest. The other one shows me wrongly assuming that Chuck Schumer had a functional spine (HERE).

The last three that I will link are somewhat instructional in nature. I feel like many do not appreciate how economically destructive Strikes (HERE) can be, how easy and effective a nonviolent tax revolt (HERE) might be, and a lastly word on self-led education and banned books (HERE).

Stay woke and take care, folks!

~NK

Take a moment to pour over this wild story from my city from earlier today.

And yes, I think that maybe woman #2 suckered her into it like bugs bunny as a matador 🐂🚩

I would consider this amount of to be about our baseline level of crazy as far as what’s the current newest and best edition to Googling the words “Arkansas Woman.” Especially given this gem from 2019. The Arresting Officer noticed her Hair bow was made of Crystal Meth baggies and said, “You’ve got to be F**king kidding me!” She of course claims she had no idea it was more than a hair bow (I suppose that she planned on that lie NOT resulting in an arrest and drug charge??)

Now, I will say she had a fly Tie-Dye but I’m not sure if I wanna be seen in one around here now. Alright, so part of the reason it is so much fun to Google “Arkansas Woman” or “Florida Man” is that both places have decent FOIA laws. They are also home to many of the most doofy, deranged, and dangerous folks you never knew you needed to laugh at before moving on (or bless and release them if you’re a better person than I am).

So yeah, I have two things to suggest about these Arkansas tales:

The first is that many parts of the country will start to see the urban rot and human tragedy that we see here as Trump policies come home to roost. We might be your future, dear reader in a purple state; for we here in Arkansas are on the cutting & bleeding edge of governance by cruelty. See, we already have the following in FULL BLOOM like a Civic case of the Measles:

Right to work laws? ✅

Abortion Ban? ✅

Crumbling Roads & Bridges ✅

Give up on vehicle inspections ✅

Lax gun sales and ownership laws ✅

High Violent & Property Crime rates ✅

High Teen pregnancy rates ✅

Corrupted Petition system ✅

The state is a dismally bad employer ✅

White Flight ruined schools ✅

Overflowing prisons ✅

Pig and turkey 💩 in the Buffalo River ✅

Secondly, I am genuinely worried about this place as the Trumpocalypse plays out. It’s well armed, unwell, and dependent on food stamps & Medicaid. How far from this baseline will my city plumb the depths of depravity and strange? I dunno. I will keep you posted.

Yet even here there is real hope and a powerful will to see White Christian Nationalism (let’s call it what it is, click here for why this and not greed/power is the beating black heart of it all) wither on the vine. We had a well attended empty-seat town hall on one side of town and protested on the other where Tom Cotton was trying to meet quietly with donors (Oh and did I mention the persistent rumor about his random dallying about the 🏳️‍🌈 community here in Little Rock, yet?). So we are not giving up. Have you?

There are good weeks ahead folks! We have a multinational day of Tesla protest on the 29th of this month. Then followed by an election in Wisconsin and a jobs report on the 4th of April that is likely to cost the 🍊🤡 politically. If Tesla’s stock dips low enough after that; it will mean a Margin Call of Tesla and a possible shutdown of X.

So BUCK UP & BUCKLE UP, BUTTERCUPS!

We all may be in for a wild ride, and that may or may not seem like the case yet to everyone you know or feel like it in all the places you go. But if we here can see bits of light from inside Governor Huckleberry’s backward state Arkansas (where usually it’s so backwoods that we have to pump sunshine in) then it’s likely that these Moronic MAGA Melvins have sown their own ill fate and it’s growing like Kudzu.

~nk