Take a close look at the people in this photograph. Clearly this is a family. One can surmise that it's a mom, kids, and grandparents. One would be correct. The older folks are Yossi and Margit Silberman. They were murdered on October 7th, 2023 at their kibbutz, Nir Oz. The mom is Shiri Silberman Bibas. The children are Kfir and Ariel Bibas. Their father was fighting off the terrorists trying to keep them away from his family, but he was captured. The terrorists broke into the family's safe-room and kidnapped Shiri and the children, taking them to Gaza as hostages.
Everyone in this picture is dead.
Yarden Bibas, the father, was returned to Israel on February 1st, 2025, only to learn his family was still being held. The children came back in small coffins on February 20th, 2025.
The coffin that was supposed to hold Shiri contained the body of a woman who was matched to a hostage. Hamas cares so little for its own people that they used a corpse as a prop.
Shiri Bibas was finally returned to Israel on February 22nd, 2025.
Hamas claimed they died as the result of Israeli bombings. Forensic evidence, however, indicates that the children were murdered by bare hands
"We can confirm that baby Kfir Bibas, just 10 months old, and his older brother Ariel, aged four, were both brutally murdered by terrorists while being held hostage in Gaza no later than November 2023. These two innocent children were taken hostage alive, along with their mother, Shiri, from their home on October 7, 2023,” IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari
As the coffins containing these tiny bodies were then paraded through the crowds, Palestinians who had gathered in Khan Younis in Gaza cheered. It bears repeating: they cheered at the sight of caskets with dead children in. The videos, which Israelis have been advised not to watch on television and Israeli state media did not broadcast, show hundreds of people celebrating the fact that two children have been killed alongside their mother. There is whistling. Some even try to break through to the front of the crowds to get a better photo of the coffins. Perhaps most grotesque is that in video clips of the macabre ceremony, children can be heard playing. Some men are clearly seen with babies strapped to their chests. Too young to walk, perhaps, but old enough apparently to attend this parade of the dead.
Mislabeled coffins
The coffins were then given to the International Red Cross because it looked good to do that, not that ICRC even bothered with Jewish hostages ever, and certainly not this time. They transported the locked coffins, mislabeled, and paired with random keys that did not work, and littered with Hamas propaganda inside.
It wasn't enough to torture and murder this four; they had to desecrate the bodies as well.
Yet the world remains largely silent about this. Had Israel done the same to Palestinian bodies, the outcry would've reached Jupiter, once again confirming that the only good Jew is a dead Jew.
I've seen this observation in several formats and while I cannot associate it to a single source, it bears repeating....especially for those who choose to support the notion that they are revolutionaries for a peaceful resolution. They are not.
People liken Hamas terrorists to animals, but that’s an insult to animals. Animals hunt and kill for survival, while Hamas terrorists just massacred for fun, to feed their hate.They do not protect their young, nor do they protect the den, nest, or burrow, instead, they hide behind their most vulnerable
See, the word for animals is חיה (chaya)whose root is the wordחי(chai) which a lotta people recognize as meaning LIFE. In other words, animals are a form of life and it is an insult to animals to equate them with Hamas, a death cult. Its rituals and expectations are passed from one generation to the next.
No, Hamas are not animals; they are monsters.
The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
ICYF - Zelensky is a Jew.
ICYMI - President Felon blamed Zelensky for the war in Ukraine.
If I felt I could do it without feeling terribly guilty, I would take a few weeks off at this point. I am so tired of doom overload, I feel like my motherly alter-ego, Screech.
Yeah, my dad bestowed that little moniker upon me when he used me as a character in one of the books he wrote for his grandsons. Dad was magically creative and, using coloring books, box covers, and his own ability to draw, he combined Fraggles, Star Wars, He-Man, Muppets, and newly designed characters into these bizarre adventures for Gobo Fraggle and his friends. Junior Gorg and Dr. Strangepork had prominent roles. Screeech [with 3 e's] is Skeletor's falcon. He was a fun-killer. Apparently, that was my job: to prevent anyone from having any fun whatsoever. Or so Zayde told my sons.
This is a page from the actual book. Junior Gorg and Dr. Strangepork are sitting on a deck that looks remarkably like the one at my folks' house, Screech (that's me) swooping in, and some Fraggles are peering out from under the deck. And if that was not enough, my folks read each of the books on tape so the kids could have bedtime stories when we went home to Minnesota. You haven't heard anything until you've heard my mother snorting while not laughing every time my dad yelled, "Screech! Screech!"
And that's what I feel like right now. Only there's no snorting and no laughing.
ALL THE KING'S MEN happens to be on while I'm writing this. It's all so terribly familiar for all the wrong reasons.
Jack Burden, the journalist/aide to Governor Stark and narrator of the film, says this as articles of impeachment are being gathered:
The chips were down and Willie knew it. He was fighting for his life. He roared across the state making speech after speech and all of them adding up to the same thing. It's not me they're after, it's you. Willie hollered FOUL. Willie knew if you hollered long enough, hard enough, and loud enough, people begin to believe you. Just in case they didn't, he organized spontaneous demonstrations....In case anyone hollered back, he organized spontaneous slugging. Willie pulled every trick he ever knew - and added a few more...And always the trail led to one place, to Burden's Landing and the Judge.
But here's the thing, that movie is absolutely prescient. Not to mention scary. Scary because this politics of narcissism is not new; in fact it's as old as politics.
Right now, lots of people are filing suits attempting to prevent President Screeech from allowing the shadow president, Elon Musk, to gut the government while bypassing laws, the rules of law, settled law, and, shits and giggles, congress to make it happen. Enough federal judges are putting the brakes on, but will it be enough to save thousands of jobs and projects? Yes, the government needs slimming, but not at the expense of medical research, the environment, and human dignity.
There's an interesting concept. The Preamble to the Constitution actually recognizes the need for dignity. I'm not going to talk about slavery or indigenous people in this paragraph, just the idea that the writers recognized, in their own, rudimentary way, the need for human dignity. Here's what it says:
The Preamble
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The general welfare: if you ask me, that's the phrase that pays. No matter how you feel about bloat, research, education, or food inspections, this Constitution recognizes that a government is about people first. A government is there to insure the people living within its borders are safe. Abraham Lincoln takes it a step further when he delivers the Gettysburg Address, saying:
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
I don't think he had oligarchs and narcissists in mind when he wrote that. Quite the opposite, frankly; he was stating that the health and well-being of this nation rests in the hands of its population as a whole. When Elon Muskrat met with India's Prime Minister, the reason for the meeting...populated by the entire Muskrat family including small children (we'll talk about that in a moment)...was unclear. A reporter asked if the president knew why they were meeting, and his response was very problematic. He says, "They met. I assume he wants to do business in India."
This was a problem in the first term, but clearly, no one has bothered to look at the Emoluments Clause which applies to all federal employees from the president down. Wanna know what it says, in case you forgot? From the Constitution of the United States of America, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8:
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
If you're unsure about that very old-fashioned word emolument, it refers to a payment or stipend given to an individual. Basically, the clause is meant to prevent foreign influence applied to a member of the government which, in turn, might cause favorable treatment of the presenter. In short, it's there to keep government employees from taking bribes in various forms...like government contracts to their own firms, or favorable trading deals with foreign nations that are not available to other manufacturers, thereby giving a government worker an unfair advantage. In short, according to the Constitution you are not supposed to be lining your own pockets from governmental sources.
I did want to talk for a moment about that meeting with Modi, Mrs. Muskrat and the little Muskrats. Who brings their children to a meeting like this?
In case you don't know, or haven't read much about eastern hemisphere traditions, this was your basic attempt at dick-waving. Remember the king in The King and I telling Anna he had 67 children? See all these kids? See how fertile I am? I have 12 kids...twins and triplets, too! I am a great man because I have impregnated many women!
Really?
Okay. That's enough. I know some of this is really petty nonsense, but like a snowball rolling down a hill, it accumulates more snow, picks up speed, and runs roughshod over anything in its way. Right now, that's our government. For me, the really scary part is that the men and women we elected to protect and defend the Constitution are not doing that part of their job. Thousands of workers will be entering the jobless market if the White House can carry out their plans. The dominos of food, shelter, and available medical care will fall. Inevitably, people will go hungry. Medication will be unavailable. Families will be unable to afford fuel and people will freeze, especially the older citizens who are on a fixed income. The draconian actions will have repercussions and no one seems to be planning for that.
The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
Whenever I hear either of those two charming 40+ year old children muttering,
Let's take a
quick look at some of this past week's insane statements made by President
Felon. It started during the visit of Bibi Netanyahu, a similarly crazy world
leader. The guy is finally making progress getting hostages released, yet he's
jumping right up onto the lunatic bandwagon. One would think he would've told
President Felon not to announce until the hostages are back. But, y'know,
diarrhea of the mouth is a terrible thing to waste. From press conference on February 4th transcript:
Well, I think Jordan and Egypt will. I know they’ve spoken about it with you, and they say they’re not going to accept them. I say they will, but I think other countries will accept also. I think that Gaza maybe is a demolition site right now. If you look at Gaza, it’s all, I mean, it’s hardly a building standing, and the ones that are, are going to collapse. You can’t live in Gaza right now, and I think we need another location. I think it should be a location that’s going to make people happy.
You look over the decades — it’s all death in Gaza. This has been happening for years. It’s all death. If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people permanently in nice homes, and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed, not be knifed to death like what’s happening in Gaza. And right now, you have in Gaza a very dangerous situation in terms of explosives all over the place, in terms of tunnels that nobody knows who’s in the tunnel. The whole thing is a mess.
And I think that if we can resettle — and I believe we can do it — in areas where the leaders currently say no. I mean, I’ve been saying that with Mexico, having to do with the border and all the things, and you saw what happened: 10,000 soldiers, and they’re going to do a good job. I really believe that. And I believe Canada is going to do a good job also. They said the same thing, and then they did something much different than what you were hearing.
This is a very, very difficult situation, but we’re going to get it solved. I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza. I think that Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They’ve lived like hell. They live like, you’re living in hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back — and I believe this strongly — is because they have no alternative. What’s the alternative? Go where? There’s no other alternative. If they had an alternative, they’d much rather not go back to Gaza, and live in a beautiful alternative that’s safe.
The circus train continues down that track on February 10th as reported by CBS News:
"The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings — level it out. Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Do a real job. Do something different.
"Just can't go back. If you go back, it's gonna end up the same way it has for a hundred years. I'm hopeful that this ceasefire could be the beginning of a larger and more enduring peace that will end the bloodshed and killing once and for all. With the same goal in mind, my administration has been moving quickly to restore trust in the alliance and rebuild American strength throughout the region and we've really done that.
Trump also said he isn’t ruling out deploying U.S. troops to support reconstruction of Gaza. He envisions “long-term” U.S. ownership of a redevelopment of the territory.
Less than a week after he floated his plan for the U.S. to take control of Gaza and turn it in “the Riviera of the Middle East,” Trump, in an interview with FOX News’ Bret Baier that was set to air on Monday, said “No, they wouldn’t” when asked if Palestinians in Gaza would have a right to return to the territory. It comes as he has ramped up pressure on Arab states, especially U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt, to take in Palestinians from Gaza, who claim the territory as part of a future homeland.
“We’ll build safe communities, a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is,” Trump said. “In the meantime, I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent.”
Needless to say, Hamas has called a halt to the ceases-fire and hostage release. They claim Israel broke the cease-fire, but anyone with half a functioning brain knows they are not going to deal with anyone planning ethnic cleansing in their own territory and a permanent ban on returning to their homeland.
WHAT THE BLOODY HELL DID ANYONE THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?????? Did anyone NOT see this coming?
And if that was not enough unmitigated joy for one blog, President Felon had to add this invitation to a bigger war:
Forgive me for being a total pessimist here, but Feckless Tangerine just threw down a gauntlet that put Israel smack dab in the crosshairs of Iran. Is he trying to start a nuclear war with Iran? Telling Hamas he's gonna release the kraken on them if they don't pony up the hostages? Oh, yeah, Hamas will respond real well to that.
As for the Mideast Riviera, anyone been to Atlantic City lately? He doesn't have a good track record with high end anything, much less resorts, casinos, or country clubs. And that line about "No big money spent?" Can you say Mexican border wall, boys and girls?
The really scary part is that no one in Congress seems to be noticing that our duly elected president is completely unhinged. And I hear Putin is waiting for details before passing judgment on this grand plan. I mean he is, after all, involved with a similar situation with Ukraine, right? Birds of a feather.....
For the record, none of this is funny.
The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
Since Jordan and Egypt's are unwilling...with good reason....
to entertain the idea of resettling Palestinians with them,
how about we ship 'em all to Greenland and the new 51st state, Canadia?
Plenty o'room out on the tundra to resettle an entire population.
May as well make some money on rents and income taxes, eh?
One would think it's a pretty safe bet to say President Felon doesn't actually want to be president. Oh, he does like dressing up, making speeches, gyrating spastically on stage while appearing to be jerking off a couple of goats, and playing at attending bigly meetings as president, but he has no interest whatsoever in doing the actual work of being the president.
Sure, there have been some real dandies in the Oval Office, but to date, the only "secret" president was Edith Wilson, wife of Woodrow who stroked out while in office. She controlled his calendar, his visitors, the documents he viewed, the news he heard, and most importantly, keeping his diminishing condition secret until after he finished his second term in 1921.But their circumstance is nothing akin to what we are facing now.
President Felon loves the spotlight. He loves the sound of his own voice especially when it's making grandiose speeches lacking any resemblance to the truth. His speeches are ridiculous at best, and totally indefensible. Since he is lacking the ability to think cogently, in this second term, he has surrounded himself with a confederacy of dunces.
Unlike Jonathan Swift's proposition, that when a genius appears, a confederacy of dunces will set out to conspire to destroy him, in the case, the dunce recognizes he is inept and incapable of fulfilling the role to which he was elected, so to bolster his madness, he has surrounded himself with uninformed, uneducated, and unkind pols who view this as a rich opportunity to enrich their own pockets. Drunks, sexual predators, and unbelievably unqualified cronies are occupying strategic positions in the administration without a clue as to what these positions do or how to manage a team of that size. Regardless, they are not given their marching orders by President Felon anyway, they're getting them from the real president, the secret one, Elon Muskrat.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Reddit/BestDelegate/X/Instagram
He is dismantling whole sections of government with nothing in its place. Today he announced he's ready to get rid of the education department. He's suing a bunch of corporations because they're not buying ad space on his media conglomerate. He demanded and has gotten access to the Department of the Treasury's payment system. This is basically the government's checkbook and the team he has assembled, The DOGE Disruptors, to work on this are college kids, some graduated, all under 26 years old, with no government experience or, for that matter, ANY experience. Take a look for yourself.
WIRED Magazine identified the undergrads as Akash Bobba, 21, a student at the University of California, Berkeley; Edward Coristine, 19, a student at Northeastern University in Boston; and Ethan Shaotran, 22, a senior at Harvard. The graduates are: Luke Farritor, 23, who attended the University of Nebraska without graduating; Gautier Cole Killian, a 24-year-old who attended McGill University; and Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old who attended Berkeley
I wanna know if their parents have even given them control of their checkbooks,
Let me make this perfectly clear: ELON MUSK IS NOT AN ELECTED OFFICIAL OF THE UNITED STATES. I'll repeat that in case you missed it the first time:
ELON MUSK IS NOT AN ELECTED OFFICIAL OF THE UNITED STATES
We have not so much as voted for this guy for dog catcher. He is not elected to any office at any level of either the state or federal, yet he is running the presidency right now.
Go google "Statements by Elon Musk" and read how they are usually framed.....Musk gives the order and President Felon writes the executive order. Face it, President Felon is not cogent enough, just based on his speeches and off-prompter remarks...to think this shit up.
Musk, with the backing of the bro-tocracy, is pulling the strings. And none of these guys are thinking ahead with anything other than their own wallets. They are not considering the dominos that will fall as a result of the slash-n-burn governance. Here are a few examples looking down the road:
All those people being furloughed or outright fired? Will they all get the packages promised, or will that blow up the national debt? Will they get unemployment as well, or when the package abruptly ends? These now unemployed government workers will certainly impact the jobless numbers.
Where are all these newly unemployed people gonna get health care? President Felon never had a plan...only an idea that he was gonna tell us about next week....or the week after that....or maybe next month.
If there is no negotiation on drug prices, how are people gonna afford their most common meds...or is the bro-tocracy investing in funeral homes for long term financial security?
Fire all the inspectors and how are food safety alerts gonna be issued if there are no inspectors or offices to handle those issues?
They initially told the air traffic controllers to take the buyouts, but it seems they figure out we can't afford to lose anyone more air traffic controls. That was a plus.
Elon convinced the executive branch to kill USAID, and with it, millions of people who depend on US foreign aid to survive, opening the door to Russia, Iran, China, and others to fill that void and gain access to places they never had.
Clinical cancer trials and the NIH? We don' need no stinkin' clinical trials. Besides, only rich people who can pay for trials should get them. The side benefit is if lots of people die, they don't get social security, right?
And let's not forget the announced dismantling of the Department of Education. We, the People will become our very own third world country.
Look, I'm not suggesting there is no room for slimming down some departments or morphing them into something more useful for the 21st century. But these guys offer no remedies, no plans, no substitutions.
Did anyone else notice there are almost no women in Muskrat's minions?
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly: We the People elected these clowns and have gotten the government we deserve. Maybe this is a grand WAKEUP in call propitiously times. Maybe our fragile democracy has to rupture before it can repair itself.
Right now, my focus is on the midterms...assuming we have them. If we don't, that's a whole 'nother bag o'hammers.
ADDENDDUM:
I would urge all my readers to read today's Heather Cox Richardson's LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN . Her analysis of what is happening to the Constitution is spot on.
In 1972, when Peter C. Newman left his job as editor-in-chief at The Toronto Star for the same position at Maclean's, he had several lunch conversations with Marshall McLuhan, and had the foresight to record them.
Rummaging through his files, Newman recently discovered the lost tape of one of their luncheon conversations. "McLuhan was then in his 60s and had written most of his seminal studies of communication and the media, including The Medium is the Massage and The Gutenberg Galaxy,” Newman recalls. “This really was a conversation over lunch rather than a formal interview."
During that conversation, McLuhan makes a statement that, when I read it, just about knocked me over.
The successor to politics will be propaganda, not in the sense of a message or ideology, but the impact of the whole technology of the times. So politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favour of his image, because the image will be so much more powerful than he could ever be.
Remember, Marshall McLuhan is the guy who gave us the phrase the medium is the message, then twisted that phrase for the title of his book,The Medium is the Massage implying that we are soothed and relaxed by that which we see while at the same time it expands our horizons, possibly overwhelming us in the process. This, he warned, was not without danger: the media is easily manipulated, what we call spun. Would McLuhan be surprised by the newest extremes? Probably not.
We have become less discerning in our ability to separate truth from fiction. The fact-checking craze is testament to that. We need just about everything that comes out a political mouth to be vetted. I think this is a direct outgrowth of the massage, not the message.
But back to what McLuhan said: The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favour of his image, because the image will be so much more powerful than he could ever be.
We are seeing that play out in real time. Whether its President Felon's awkward dance moves or this insistence that the US will annex Greenland, or that he will take back the Panama Canal, the images we see flashing on the screen are attempts to get the audience to suspend their disbelief so that while what is said may be patently untrue, the audience accepts the premise presented.
During the past week, We, the People, have witnessed rapid fire, massive changes to our government: mass firings of inspector generals, pledges of mass deportations, massive repeals to parts of the social safety net putting millions of low income and middle class citizens at risk, and so on. The Constitution has been challenged in ways never before seen, as in the matter of birthright citizenship.
The Oval Office likes to talk about how other countries send us their violent criminals while releasing hundreds of violent seditionists back into the general population. He went even further requesting the DoJ drop all investigations into the actions on January 6th, 2021. Former federal prosecutor Alexis Loeb offered the observation that
These pardons suggest that if you commit acts of violence, as long as you do so on behalf of a politically powerful person you may be able to escape consequences, They undermine — and are a blow to — the sacrifice of all the officers who put themselves in the face of harm to protect democracy on Jan. 6.
That's a direct contradiction to the promises he made to be law enforcement's best friend, and that violent offenders would not be pardoned.
Jake Angeli-Chansley, the Q-Anon Shaman, upon his release from jail, announced on X just how he was going to celebrate:
I JUST GOT THE NEWS FROM MY LAWYER... I GOT A PARDON BABY! THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!!! NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!! J6ers are getting released & JUSTICE HAS COME... EVERYTHING done in the dark WILL come to light!
[Well, if that doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, I don't know what will.]
It is becoming increasingly clear from the optics this guy presents that he is in no way interested in governing FOR the people.The only thing he wants is the spotlight. He is playing at being president, but not actually doing it. That job he's leaving to the surrounding sycophants. And those sharks are already eating each other as demonstrated by the rapid departure of Vivek Ramasmarmy. Despite claims he's gonna run for Governor of Ohio, the general consensus is that Elon Musty forced him out.
And no autopsy would be complete without mention of Elon. Some people wrote in accusing me of "fake news," but I'm not sure how that picture of Musty was fake news. Nor was I alone in my revulsion...one country even tried to ban him from entering ever again. As I told one of my faithful correspondents: It's all about the optics.
In a message posted on a variety of platforms today, his longtime buddy, Philip S. Low, wrote rather interestingly about his ex-friend. I have copied the post from LinkedIn and it's worth reading:
I have known Elon Musk at a deep level for 14 years, well before he was a household name. We used to text frequently. He would come to my birthday party and invite me to his parties. He would tell me everything about his women problems. As sons of highly accomplished men who married venuses, were violent and lost their fortunes, and who were bullied in high school, we had a number of things in common most people cannot relate to. We would hang out together late in Los Angeles. He would visit my San Diego lab. He invested in my company.
Elon is not a Nazi, per se.
He is something much better, or much worse, depending on how you look at it.
Nazis believed that an entire race was above everyone else.
Elon believes he is above everyone else. He used to think he worked on the most important problems. When I met him, he did not presume to be a technical person — he would be the first to say that he lacked the expertise to understand certain data. That happened later. Now, he believes he has all the solutions.
All his talk about getting to Mars to “maintain the light of consciousness” or about “free speech absolutism” is actually BS Elon knowingly feeds people to manipulate them. Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. That is why he likes far right parties, because they are easier to control. That is also why he gave himself $56 Billion which could have gone to the people actually doing the work and innovations he is taking credit for at Tesla. His lust for power is also why he did xAI and Neuralink, to attempt to compete with OpenAI and NeuroVigil, respectively, despite being affiliated with them. Unlike Tesla and Twitter, he was unable to conquer those companies and tried to create rivals. I fired him with cause in December 2021 when he tried to undermine NV.
Elon did two Nazi salutes.
He did them for five main reasons:
1. He was concerned that the “Nazi wing” of the MAGA movement, under the influence of Steve Bannon, would drive him away from Trump, somewhere in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, rather than in the West Wing which is where he wants to be. He was already feeling raw over the fact that Trump did not follow his recommendation for Treasury Secretary and that the Senate also did not pick his first choice;
2. He was upset that he had had to go to Israel and Auschwitz to make up for agreeing with a Nazi sympathizer online and wanted to reclaim his “power” just like when he told advertisers to “go fuck yourself”. This has nothing to do with Asperger’s;
3. There are some Jews he actually hates: Sam Altman is amongst them;
4. He enjoys a good thrill and knew exactly what he was doing;
5. His narcissistic self was hoping the audience would reflect his abject gesture back to him, thereby showing complete control and dominion over it, and increasing his leverage over Trump. That did not happen.
Bottom line: Elon is not a Nazi but he did give two Nazi Salutes, which is completely unacceptable.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch....
Four more hostages have been released. The women, given military uniforms for the "event," were unbowed. From The TImes of Israel
The four hostages released Saturday have told their families and friends that they determinedly showed Hamas, during the staged event the terror group had arranged for their handover, that they would not be humiliated, according to reports of their initial conversations.
The four young women — abducted IDF surveillance soldiers Karina Ariev, 20, Daniella Gilboa, 20, Naama Levy, 20, and Liri Albag, 19 — walked to the stage set up in a square in Gaza City calmly and confidently, and smiled and waved to the crowds of Hamas gunmen and Gazans.
Despite promises they would be released, no Bibases were on the list. This has given rise to greater speculation that 1) Shiri, the mom, Ariel, and Kfir are dead; 2) Hamas is not in possession of their bodies; 3) the fate of their dad, Yarden, at this writing, remains unknown.
The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
Today is January 27th,
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
I've been sitting here for a while trying to figure out what I wanna write about. I've been through several opening drafts, but none of them were useful.
Three young hostages were released from Gaza yesterday. They are the first of 33 to ultimately to released.
Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher and Romi Gonan photos released by the Hostage and Missing Families Forum
Emily Damari, 28, was taken from her home at Kibbutz Kfar Aza. She was shot in the hand...and lost two fingers. She was also shot in the leg. She was bound and then tossed into her own car when she was taken. And just so everyone knows they're equal opportunity monsters, they shot her dog as well.
Doron Steinbrecher, 31, a veterinary nurse, was in her apartment on Kibbutz Kfar Aza. She was able to leave a message for her family before she was taken:
They've arrived, they have me.
Romi Gonen, 24, was at the Nova Festival. She called her mother from the car as she and others were fleeing. They were caught in the traffic jam. Her mother could hear them screaming as they tried to escape.
They shot me, Mom and I’m bleeding...Everyone in the car is bleeding.
The release of the hostages was well choreographed for video release. The screaming mobs were attacking the vehicles as they moved through crowds. Highlights included the mob trying to grab the girls as they transferred to the International Red Cross transports. The guns waving, the masked and hooded goons filled the street. Funny thing about those suffering Palestinians....everyone looked really healthy and well fed for a population experiencing "genocide and starvation" at the hands of the Israelis.Usually, people who are starved and being killed off don't look so robust, but these guys look positively in tiptop shape.
photo released by Hamas.
And let's not forget about the swag bags the hostages were handed as they got into the Red Cross van.According to a family member, the bag held a necklace, some photos of their time in captivity (according to Israeli media,) and a certificate that read in Hebrew and Arabic: Release decision.
I guess that's to frame and hang on the wall. Souvenirs to remember the fun experience of a lifetime? Notice the gun on the Qassam Brigade log.
Is this supposed to make everyone feel better? Like they got consolation prizes? Really?
So in exchange for those swag bags, Israel released 90 Palestinian prisoners. Not everyone is thrilled with this skewed reciprocity since many of the prisoners to be released during the cessation of hostilities are somewhat likely to be terrorists. Those prisoners will return to Gaza and the West Bank and you know damn well they are not "reformed." Has Israel unleashed a new wave of terror on itself? This is not an uncommon thought.
But...and isn't there always a but? This is the difference between us and them. Israelis will do what they have to do to get the hostages back. That includes DEAD hostages. They need to come home to be buried, to bring closure to their families, to end the waiting. And here's another fine kicker for the event: Hamas and its subgroups aren't quite sure where the hostages, dead or alive, are to be found. And like so many others, I cannot stop thinking about the Bibas family.
Those two red-headed boys. What happened to them? One report said they were dead. Another said Shiri was with them. A third said baby Kfir was given to a Palestinian family. No one knows the truth, and so far, Hamas doesn't seem to know either. I suspect they are all dead, but I don't want to believe that.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Feckless Felon is now President Felon, the first to occupy the oval office. Before he turned off the lights, President Biden pre-empted what was rumored to be coming down the road, by pardoning his own family members and granting clemency for Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci and the members of Congress who served on the January 6, 2021 investigation for the attack on the Capitol. Pardoning your own family may not be the best possible optic but all things considered......
President Felon has already pardoned the attackers, including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.
This is not as unusual as it sounds. Confederate officers and soldiers were pardoned by Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, who also restored their property and voting rights. This was part of the process to reunite the two halves of the country. JImmy Carter pardoned those who dodged the Vietnam era draft.
Somehow, I think an attack on the Capitol by a small group under the direction of an elected official is not the same. Those guys should serve time even if their instigator does not. At the very least their right to own a weapon should be suspended....not that it will. Interestingly, at the time of his inauguration, President Felon cannot own a gun. Of course, now he owns an army, but who's looking, right?
And how lucky for him! He talks about expansionism in terms we've not heard since...oh, I dunno....Putin and Ukraine? His use of the phrase Manifest Destiny, even if applied to space, should worry everyone. Not exactly The Prime Directive.
America will reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world. A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
And Panama's promise to us has been broken. The purpose of our deal and the spirit of our treaty has been totally violated. American ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form, and that includes the United States Navy. And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn't give it to China, we gave it to Panama, and we're taking it back.
Together, we will end the chronic disease epidemic and keep our children safe, healthy and disease free. The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons. And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.
Worth mentioning...at least I think so... was statement in President Felon's address that confounded me:
After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents. Something I know something about. We will not allow that to happen. It will not happen again. Under my leadership, we will restore fair, equal and impartial justice under the Constitution and the rule of law. And we are going to bring law and order back to our cities.
This is coming from the standard bearer of the party that mounts huge challenges to books available in schools. In one breath he talks about only two genders, and the next breath he's talking about freedom of expression. Talk about cognitive dissonance. Even if he had speechwriters, we know he wanders away from the script.
The bottom line is that you cannot trust what he says; watch what he does. When he doesn't get his way, he lashes out and changes direction. Those are gonna be the seriously scary moments.
And I'm not even gonna mention the meme coin bitcoin bullshit that netted the Felonious family, according to some reports, billion$. I love that the first one is called $TRUMP. Kind fitting, dontcha think. A whore is a whore is a whore.
[And update on the crypto biz from Heather Cox Richardson's Letters From An American Jan. 20, 2025...and worth noting:
The tone for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States at noon today was set on Friday, when Trump, who once trashed cryptocurrency as “based on thin air,” launched his own cryptocurrency. By Sunday morning it had made more than $50 billion on paper. Felix Salmon of Axios reported that “a financial asset that didn’t exist on Friday afternoon—now accounts for about 89% of Donald Trump’s net worth.”
As Salmon noted, “The emoluments clause of the Constitution,” which prohibits any person holding a government office from accepting any gift or title from a foreign leader or government, “written in 1787, hardly envisaged a world where a president could conjure billions of dollars of wealth out of nowhere just by endorsing a meme.” Salmon also pointed out that there is no way to track the purchases of this coin, meaning it will be a way for those who want something from Trump to transfer money directly to him.
Former Trump official Anthony Scaramucci posted that “anyone in the world can essentially deposit money” into the bank account of the president of the United States. ]
Let's leave you some enduring pictures of today's festivities:
Elon greets the loyal minions.
Melania in a blue Carmen Sandiego hat. You know, of course, Carmen wears red.
