“I get a sound of thunder, it’s like a heavy gong. I hear a storm warning on every tongue made of silver, every heel made of high, every dress made of tight, every look, every sigh.” From Dose of You, written by Nick Lowe.

Hey, Happy New Year! And while I’m at it, can you do me a favor?

Please do not say “2026 can’t be any worse than 2025.” Last year really sucked, but please don’t even think it can’t get any worse. I fully trust the Lords and Ladies of Irony to do their job, and regardless of your native tongue they speak pure sarcasm.

January 1st was just the way I wanted to start the new year. It was a bright and sunny day, a bit chilly by local standards and few people were on the road. I sailed through my trip to the supermarket and I drove home with the news President Trump’s doctors told him to cut back on the aspirin. He refused, saying “I want nice, thin blood.”

I couldn’t ask for a better way to start the year. And I hope Del Close will forgive me, but… yes, but…

It’s going to take a shitload of stamina to make it through 2026.

Leading this nation into hell is a comic book villain with blatantly obvious mental, emotional, behavioral, and developmental disorders. A habitual liar, a rapist, a person who by his own words protects people who rape children. A man who is so xenophobic he wants to deport everybody who isn’t a white Anglo-Saxon, including American citizens. He rips children from their families, and in all too many cases these families never see their children again.

I wonder. What happened to those kids? We know some are no longer alive. How did they die?

Trump is very pissed that Barack Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize, and he didn’t. That’s not even his most jejune stance. He ripped down a large chunk of our White House to build a throne room that cannot be finished in his lifetime, a mausoleum in his own “honor.”

But, then again, his illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, kidnapping its dictator, and then declaring that he now runs Venezuela makes him a conqueror — perhaps Putin has dibs on Poland. But FIFA’s gonna have to schedule another game if Trump wants a second “peace prize.”

It’s become so bad that its getting through to a few MAGAts. Not many in Washington except (now) former Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who came out against Trump for failure to advance her Christian Nationalist agenda. To be fair, she. almost alone among her peers, seems upset about all that pederasty stuff.

Fine. Riddle me this: We are seven months away from our nation’s 250th anniversary. Trump may still be President on July 4th. What will our enfant-terrible-in-chief do? We know he’ll make it all about himself. Check out how his influencer pal Vlad will be celebrating Russia’s annual liberation day at Moscow’s Manezhnaya Square this May 9th: 14,000 military, over 210 military vehicles and 3,800 military vehicle crews, modern tanks and ballistic missiles, and at least 88 aircraft flying in tribute. Watch it on CBS News; maybe Ryan Seacrest will host it.

Trump’s only achievement is his ability to resist dying from a diet so horrific that, even I, think it’s dangerous. However, he’s become so puerile that he is only seventy-seven words away from losing his job, and his protection from prison. Section 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

Yup. That will give us President J.D. Vance, who is backed by the financial might of his owner Peter Thiel. That is horrific but less childish and somewhat more worldly. That is not comforting in the least.

We can and must end the MAGA takeover of America. It might be our last opportunity to save our democracy with little-to-no bloodshed. Otherwise, restoring democracy will be very noisy.

We can do this. It will take less energy to put an end to MAGA fascism than it will to put up with them.

I know it’s wearing us down — that’s Trump’s plan and it’s working. Figure out how to vote this November 3rd and get your friends to vote. MAGA will continue to make it extremely difficult for those voters who want to loss Trump and his moral zombies into the toxic waste dump they deserve.

To quote Edward R. Morrow, goodnight and good luck.