Marie Graham posted on Facebook:
“Red State Texas has 2.1M undocumented immigrants. Red State Florida has 1.6M.
“Blue State Minnesota has 130,000.
“Don’t let anyone tell you this is about immigration. It never was.”
Also on Facebook:
“When Jesus said ‘Love thy neighbor,’ all his neighbors were Jews.”
After The New York Times did an article on the sale of Nobel Prizes (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/world/americas/nobel-peace-prize-sold-auctions.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share ), the following appeared on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17obPV8udj/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Here’s a Substack posting I liked and agreed with, this one from Charlie Dog:
“As the Kardashians celebrate their 20th season I would like to congratulate myself for never watching a single episode.”
If the NFL wants to balance the debate on the “tush-push” quarterback sneak, the league should outlaw any gain by a quarterback pushed from behind or carried forward by a teammate, a la the nine-plus yards Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen gained against Jacksonville in a recent playoff game.
In the end, Donald Trump’s pursuit of Greenland destroyed America’s credibility and loyalty with our allies. And exposed Trump as a schoolyard bully who, as the TACO label he has earned connotes, Trump Always Chickens Out when confronted by intelligent, committed adversaries.
To what end was Trump’s fulminating over Greenland? Probably, just public recognition that our status in Greenland will be similar to what we have in Cuba for the Guantanamo Bay base and for military cemeteries for our dead in France, Germany and other lands where and when we protected the world from aggression and evil. The land will always belong to Greenlanders but on military bases and other areas designated by Trump, America will lease territory in perpetuity with the right to extract any resources, for a fee.
So now our country may return to its regularly scheduled program of “Epstein and the Missing Files, Promised But Never Delivered.” Stay tuned for more Epstein ad nauseam until Trump comes up with another distraction—Canada? Jack Smith indictment? Another love fest get together with Putin?
As Trump and the Trumpster Party get reacquainted with reality, it is instructive to review the 2024 election results.
No matter how slim their margin of victory, most politicians, especially presidents, view their success as a mandate for change.
Trump is no exception. Yes, his Electoral College number far exceeded that of Kamala Harris. But a look at gross voter totals reported by Wikipedia provides a clearer view of how the country as a whole assessed his favorability.
Eligible voters totaled 244,666,890. Trump garnered support from 31.6% of the eligible voters; Harris slightly fewer, 30.66%. Other candidates managed 1.19%.
More than a third of all eligible voters—36.55%, or 89,425,935—chose not to endorse any candidate. In other words, by a large margin neither Trump nor Harris invigorated at least half of the electorate to vote for them. More people voted for Trump’s opponent or chose not to vote at all than voted for Trump. Hardly a result worthy of being called a mandate.
Clearly the number one goal of our political process must be enhancing voter turnout. Election Day should be a national holiday for all workers. Perhaps moved to a weekend so more voters do not have to choose between work, schooling or voting. Now that most pols see the benefit of mail-in voting, we should expand the practice, with proper safeguards.
Of course, Trump will continue to thwart efforts to make our democracy work more efficiently and effectively. He is, to our regret, an Old World authoritarian, by nature as well as by deed.
If you made it through David Brooks’ trenchant column in The New York Times on the unraveling of democracy under the narcissistic, power-hungry Trump, you would have read his concluding paragraph, reproduced here:
“As John Adams put it in a letter in 1798: ‘We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net’” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/opinion/trump-authoritarian-power.html?unlocked_article_code=1.G1A.q_fk.w1MxL63SBrbL&smid=url-share).
Morality. A man whose whole life has been shaded by immorality says his actions as president of the United States are limited only by his morality.
How immoral is Trump? Let’s see:
Working with his father in their real estate business, the Trumps were cited for racial discrimination; he often stiffed contractors; he was found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room; he cheated on three wives; he would look in on undressed teenage contestants in his beauty pageants; he bankrupted six businesses; he bamboozled people seeking Trump University education; he fomented insurrection at the Capitol to stop the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election; he lies about events; he covets what is not his own; he palled around with Jeffrey Epstein; he pardoned convicted drug kingpins even as he was attacking Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro for exporting drugs; he has pardoned or commuted sentences of numerous felons who bilked thousands out of millions of dollars, voiding restitutions; he has authorized the killing of civilians, ostensibly drug runners, on the high seas when international and U. S. law authorizes interdiction and arrest, not murder; he has taken action with a meat cleaver to shred social welfare and healthcare services to millions of dependent populations, many of whom are children, the most vulnerable, at home and abroad who need food and medicines to sustain life.
And perhaps the most iconic evidence of Trump’s immorality and immaturity, his text to the prime minister of Norway that because he did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize he no longer “has an obligation to think purely of Peace.”