What do Trump’s Secretaries of Transportation and Labor, and his EPA administrator,  have in common? They all have taken out mortgages on multiple properties that they called primary residences. What do Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook, and Letitia James have in common? They have all been accused by Bill Pulte of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board of mortgage fraud for the same reason. Mortgage fraud is a crime. Pulte says if you committed mortgage fraud, you will be convicted and punished, whoever you are. And, he says, if you signed two applications claiming two primary residences, you are guilty, circumstances be damned.

Keep your eyes open. Let’s see what happens. First, we will see if Lisa Cook, who has been “fired” by Herr Trump, gets to keep her job.

By the way, in case you missed it, there is another (legitimate) FED opening, and Trump nominated Stephen Miran, chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors. The problem is that Miran does not want to (or has been told not to) abandon his current position, only to take a brief “leave of absence”. So much for FED independence, I guess. I understand. You can’t have an independent central bank in a dictatorship, even if you still call it a democracy. Just ask your favorite Turk.

Moving on….Trump is proposing to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, bringing ambiguity to that age-old question, “how’s the DOW doing today?”. Okay, maybe not ambiguous in print, but think radio.

Now only Congress (60% vote in the Senate) can change the name officially, but in a dictatorship that hardly matters. Trump has already, of course, changed the name of Mt. Denali and the Gulf of Mexico, and there seems to be no limit. Why does he permit Ukraine to keep its name? What would be wrong with South Russia? And didn’t someone already suggest that Greenland (or Grønland) could become Redwhiteandblüeland? It would be easy for the Panama Canal to become the Trump Canal, and the to-be State of Canada could become, say, North North Dakota.

Now, the Department of War was named the same day the US military demolished a Venezuelan boat, allegedly bringing drugs to the United States.

What could be wrong with this picture? It was an act of war, and we are not at war with anybody? We killed 11 people, but don’t know who they were, or whether they were guilty individually of anything? Bringing drugs into the US, if that is what they were doing, is not a capital crime even after arrest, trial, and conviction? The boat may have been heading to Trinidad, not the U.S.? I could go on with this…..

And then there is the Department of HHS, to be renamed the Department of SIS, Sickness and Inhumane Services. Tylenol, if taken by pregnant women, causes autism. Where have I read that before? That’s right. Nowhere. I wonder why.

Now, I have my own suspicions. I think Fox News  causes a mental condition that I term Fatal Nonsense Creep (or FNC). If I were in charge of SIS, you can be sure that no pregnant woman in this country would be allowed to watch Fox News. This would save an entire generation of unborn children from FNC and put this country on the road to revival.

Alright, that is enough for today. By the way, assuming there is a 2028 presidential election, do you think Vance will win reelection?