2026 Is Finally Here...

Happy New Year, everyone. Just a reminder that Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" (or as I call it, the One Big Bullshit Bill) will begin screwing Americans over in 2026—specifically after the November midterm elections. 17 million individuals in the United States are at risk of losing their healthcare thanks to the demented Pedophile in Chief.

So as a reminder, do everything you can to nullify the effects of this crappy piece of legislation, and completely vote blue 10 months from now! So-called House Speaker Mike Johnson and Steve "Satan" Bannon both predict that the Democrats regaining control of the House of Representatives in the midterms will lead to yet another Trump impeachment, and spell the end of his reign of incompetency and corruption... Let's prove them right.

A Random Star Wars Reference...

So how much did this guy pay Boba Fett to bring Han Solo's carbonite-encased body back to his palace on Tatooine? Trump's new nickname should be Pedo the Hutt.

🚨 BREAKING: Oversight Dems received 95,000 new photos from Jeffrey Epstein's estate. These disturbing images raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world.

Time to end this White House cover-up. Release the files! pic.twitter.com/nQNIywayb9

— Oversight Dems (@OversightDems) December 12, 2025

Trump Continues to Double Down on his Stupidity...

So earlier today, this screenshot of a Truth Social post made by Donald Trump was shared online...showing that the fascist pedophile is ready to deploy U.S. military soldiers and ICE agents to the city of Chicago.

Not only is Trump apparently resigned to the fact that he'll never win a Nobel Peace Prize—not with him invading a third American city with American troops in three months—but he's trying so, so very hard to distract folks from the other fact that he raped underage girls with his dead buddy Jeffrey Epstein.

Nice try, Trump. The only way you'll make people forget that you're a child sex predator is by employing that memory-erasing gizmo Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones used in the Men in Black movies. Since those memory-erasing gizmos (called 'neuralyzers') don't exist, just like Marjorie Taylor Greene's Jewish Space Lasers, you'll have to make do with the fact that history will always remember you as the twice-impeached, 34-time convicted felon who canoodled with foreign dictators like Kim Jong Un and now-deceased pedophiles who conducted sex-trafficking operations on a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

MAGA!

The Trump Regime Just Keeps Doing Stupid Things...

So earlier today, Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming the Department of Defense back to the World War II-era Department of War. According to Fox News (yes, I'm quoting that Republican propaganda mouthpiece), the 5-time draft-dodging pedophile made the change because it sent "a message of victory, a message of strength" to the world.

Overlooking the fact that Trump showed just how weak he was when he met up with Russian dictator Vladmir Putin on U.S. soil last month to make a deal to end the Ukraine war (Trump unsurprisingly came away from the meeting empty-handed), this is just another stupid act by the convicted felon to distract the American people from his incompetence as president and his presence in the Epstein files. Also, this is another diversion from today's jobs report that announced only 22,000 jobs were added last month—with the unemployment rate in the U.S. increasing to 4.3%.

(Oh, and the U.S. now has more unemployed people than job openings for the first time since April 2021. In July, the U.S. had 7.18 million job openings, with 7.24 million unemployed individuals. Trump is bringing America back to a pandemic-era economy.)

The fact that Trump, the supposed anti-war candidate according to right-wing folks during the 2024 election season, would rebrand the Pentagon as a warmongering apparatus of the U.S. government makes it even more stupid that he tried to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Combine the Department of War with Trump illegally bombing Iran, illegally sending military troops to American cities like Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and possibly Chicago, and murdering 11 people on a Venezuelan boat in international waters in the Caribbean (an act of war, apparently), and Trump is just showing that he wants to enhance a fraudulent political legacy in American history that he absolutely does not deserve.

And of course, you have MAGA halfwits like Pete Hegseth enabling his sex-offending boss by sharing the tweet above. According to the Fox News article mentioned at the start of this Blog entry, this is Trump's 200th executive order. In other words, the next Democratic president will have at least 200 items to overturn—via executive orders—on Inauguration Day less than four years from now.

Have a nice weekend.

UPDATE (11:15 PM, PDT): For some stupid reason the Fox News article won't open if you click on the link at the start of this Blog entry. Look up "Department of War" on Google and you'll be able to visit the article there. Screw you, Rupert Murdoch's former company.

REMINDER: The unemployment rate was at or under 4% for 30 consecutive months under President Biden.

He averaged 343,750 jobs/month while in office.

By comparison, trump added an anemic 70,833 jobs per month from January to August 2025, and unemployment rose from 4% to 4.3%.

We… pic.twitter.com/s1B5v1MYcE

— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) September 5, 2025

Photos of the Day: A Summer Tour at NASA JPL...

Richard T. Par

Just thought I'd end this month by sharing pictures I took during a public tour, held on July 17, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge, California.

Unlike previous tours that I attended over the past couple of years, there was no spacecraft like Europa Clipper or the Perseverance Mars rover currently being built inside JPL's historic Spacecraft Assembly Facility. Instead, a science instrument known as ASTHROS (Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths) was being prepped for an upcoming high-altitude balloon mission that will deploy above Antarctica. The balloon that will send ASTHROS 130,000 feet (25 miles) into the stratosphere itself is pretty impressive; when fully-inflated, the helium-filled sphere will reach a diameter of 460 feet, which is about the size of Dodger Stadium here in Los Angeles!

While it's cool to see an airborne science instrument being constructed at JPL, it remains to be seen when the venerable laboratory will get to assemble a spaceborne payload (for a mission like Mars Sample Return) once again. Thanks to the loss of hundreds of laid-off employees and an uncertain NASA budget for next year thanks to Donald Trump, it may be quite a while till JPL gets to construct another robotic explorer that will venture somewhere in our Solar System.

In the meantime, JPL will just have to remain the "Center of the Universe" for current deep space missions that won't be affected by the lousy policies of a convicted felon in the White House. Carry on.


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par

On This Day in 2015: Remembering New Horizons' Historic Flyby of Pluto and its Moons...

NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute

So it was 10 years ago today that NASA's New Horizons spacecraft became the first-ever robotic probe to explore the dwarf planet Pluto and its five moons (Charon, Nix, Styx, Kerberos and Hydra) up-close. Even though Pluto has been a dwarf planet since the summer of 2006...when the International Astronomical Union demoted the former ninth planet from the Sun, this flyby completes NASA's robotic investigation of all the classical worlds (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) in our Solar System. Dozens of other objects have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt region beyond Pluto since then, but the 2015 encounter marked a major milestone in planetary exploration.

New Horizons is now destined to become the third functioning spacecraft to reach interstellar space—behind Voyager 1 and 2. Of course, saying that New Horizons will still be functional when it leaves the heliosphere may be a bit optimistic, as Trump lackey Russ Vought wants New Horizons to be one of the dozens of space missions that gets decommissioned under the White House's crappy budget for fiscal year (FY) 2026. Fortunately, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives reject the attempt by Vought to impose his PROJECT 2025 nonsense to NASA's venerable planetary science program.

We'll see what happens when the FY 2026 budget supposedly becomes enacted on October 1st. Stay tuned.

A CD carrying the names of 430,000 people is onboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft as it literally heads to the stars...

I missed the deadline to submit my own name (as well as those of my family members and friends) in September 2005. 😭 pic.twitter.com/bAoZ23VBbw

— Rich Par (@AstroPnoy) July 14, 2025

ANOTHER TRUMP FAILURE: The Planetary Society Has Something to Say About Russ Vought's Stupid Attack on the U.S. Space Program...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

Every Living NASA Science Chief Unites in Opposition to Unprecedented Budget Cuts (Press Release)

Seven former leaders of NASA’s Science program urge Congress to reject the wasteful 47% cuts proposed in the White House’s FY 2026 budget proposal

Pasadena, CA — In a joint statement, every living former head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate SMD — the agency's top science leadership position — has condemned the White House's proposed 47% cuts to NASA science activities in the White House’s fiscal year (FY) 2026 budget proposal. This letter has been transmitted to the leadership of the House and Senate appropriations committees.

The letter, publicly released today, warns that the White House’s budget proposal would “walk away from dozens of current, extraordinarily successful and productive science missions” and halt nearly all future investments in exploration and innovation. The signatories — John Grunsfeld, Alphonso Diaz, Lennard Fisk, Wesley Huntress, Alan Stern, Edward Weiler and Thomas Zurbuchen — each served as Associate Administrator for NASA's science program. They are calling on Congress to preserve U.S. leadership in space exploration and reject the unprecedented cuts to space science concocted by the White House’s Budget Director, Russ Vought.

“NASA science endeavors are exercises in long-term national commitment that pay dividends to the American people,” they write. “Given the scale of the proposed cuts, their long-term consequences, and the potential loss of human knowledge and inspiration, we unanimously urge Congress to reject the proposed cuts.”

Together, the signatories span nearly four decades of NASA’s scientific leadership serving under every administration from Reagan to Biden.

The full letter can be read here.

Source: The Planetary Society

****


The Planetary Society

IDIOCRACY Has Become a Documentary in the Trump Era...

So yesterday, the image above was shared online days after it was announced that an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) match will take place at the White House's South Lawn on July 4, 2026... America's 250th birthday.

The reason why this event is such a farce has to do with the fact that Donald Trump is close friends with UFC CEO Dana White. And just like what Trump did when he promoted Tesla near the South Lawn about four months ago (back when he and Elon Musk were still buddies), the Felon-in-Chief is using his undeserved residency at the White House to prop up wealthy donors like White and Musk.

Considering the fact that Trump has populated his cabinet with clowns like former FOX News host Pete Hegseth (who's now the Signal Chat-loving Secretary of Defense), FOX News host Judge Jeanine Pirro (the wine-soaked U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia), FOX News contributor and Russian puppet Tulsi Gabbard (the Director of National Intelligence), World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon (the U.S. Secretary of Education) and dog-killing cosplayer Kristi Noem (the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Secretary, who didn't know what 'habeas corpus' was), it's no wonder why folks are comparing this country's current political climate to that of Idiocracy.

If you've never heard of Idiocracy before, it's a 2006 movie (which was test-screened by a marketing company I used to work at back in November 2004) starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph and Terry Crews that is a dystopian satire tackling such issues as commercialism (epitomized by the Trump/Musk photo directly below) and anti-intellectualism—the latter of which has been prevalent among the MAGA faithful since 2016. Idiocracy has become increasingly relevant as Trump continues to make a mockery of American democracy and causing his supporters to be more mistrusting of science; believing that geo-engineering is responsible for extreme weather (like the one that caused the tragic floods currently plaguing Texas) and not climate change itself.

Another movie that defines Trump is 2000's Gladiator. Much like Emperor Commodus (played by Joaquin Phoenix), Trump is a sad and insecure would-be tyrant who's apparently using the spectacle of arena combat to hide the fact that he is an incompetent leader catering to the dregs of society to attain popularity. And this will increasingly become the case as Trump gets more desperate for adulation after doing such destructive things to the American people as signing that One, Big, Bullshit Bill into law two days ago.

Presumably, this nightmare will be over by early 2029—unless Trump succeeds in getting a MAGA successor voted into the Oval Office in late '28, or worse (F**k you, Andy Ogles). It will be a very, very long time before the U.S. begins some kind of healing from the wounds that the convicted felon has been inflicting upon the American Experiment since the summer of 2015...when Trump began his chaotic run for the presidency. Carry on.

There Was No Reason to Celebrate Today...

So today is Independence Day here in the U.S. and a lot of Americans celebrated with fireworks and barbecues despite the fact that Donald Trump just signed a massively destructive piece of legislation (the so-called One, Big, Beautiful Bill) that will take health insurance away from 17 million people (possibly including me), adding up to $3.1 trillion to the national debt, and providing over $160 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to intensify their terrorization of non-white communities here in Southern California and other parts of the country.

You can thank spineless weasels like Alaska's Lisa Murkowski in the U.S. Senate, and Trump boot-licking halfwits like House Speaker Mike Johnson for allowing the convicted felon to continually do damage to this country from his undeserved residence in the White House. Oh, and let's not forget Trump's concentration camp known as Alligator Alcatraz (a.k.a. Alligator Auschwitz) in Florida...which was built in just eight days and is where ICE detainees will face the wrath of a hurricane if they're unlucky enough to be held at the camp when a powerful storm hits.

So yea, I hope you enjoyed your grilled hot dogs, steaks and hamburgers, fellow Yanks— The One, Big, Bullshit Bill is just one part of PROJECT 2025 and the Trump Administration will soon try to enact other destructive pieces (such as "election reform"...which may lead to Trump being given the power to delay future elections or remove the venues, such as mail-in ballots, that allow Americans to vote) of that Heritage Foundation-provided blueprint. The Fourth of July is an irrelevant holiday for at least the next three years.

Screenshots of the Day: Reactions to Trump's Attack on Iran, and Bringing America Into Another War...

U.S. Air Force

So yesterday afternoon, the world found out that Donald Trump ordered airstrikes—conducted by seven B-2 stealth bombers and a multitude of fighter jets including the F-22 Raptor—against three underground nuclear facilities in Iran. These attacks, which were unprovoked considering that Iran was originally not in conflict with the U.S. but only Israel, came a week after Trump's disastrous military parade to honor his birthday, and over two weeks after Elon Musk effectively called the convicted felon a pedophile by tweeting that Trump was on Jeff Epstein's client list (see below).

Here are screenshots of tweets attacking Trump for Saturday's military action (dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer)...by both MAGA folks and anti-Trumpers alike. We'll see what happens now that Trump got America embroiled in another foreign conflict (despite the fact that MAGA folks voted for Trump partly because he was supposedly never going to get the U.S. caught up in another endless war)...with reports that Iran might close the economically-vital Strait of Hormuz an indicator that things will only get worse before they get better.

So much for that Nobel Peace Prize (which was endorsed by Osama bin Laden's final country of residence: Pakistan), Trump.

The Latest STAR WARS Disney+ Show Is More Relevant Than Ever in the Trump Era...

So in case you guys haven't been following U.S. news recently, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been conducting numerous raids around Southern California over the last few days. Considering that the population in SoCal—and Los Angeles in general—is predominantly Latino, citizens in this metropolitan area of 4 million people didn't take the news lightly.

So as the news coverage have shown, score of Angelenos have been protesting against the federal agents...prompting wannabe dictator Donald Trump to deploy the California National Guard (as opposed to CA Governor Gavin Newsom making this call himself—which would be the norm if the U.S. was still a fully-functioning democracy) in Los Angeles.

Now, if you watched the hit Star Wars Disney+ series Andor, or at least Season 2 of the show which concluded last month, you'd feel that this provocation being wrought by the Trump regime against a Democratic state like California was suspicious as hell. In Andor: Season 2, we found out that the Empire antagonized Ghorman to force a local uprising that would justify the deployment of Imperial forces onto the small world...allowing the Empire to secretly mine a resource known as 'deep substrate foliated kalkite' that would be used to power the superlaser on the Death Star.

I highly doubt that Trump is creating a Moon-sized battle station (since most of the people in his administration are idiots who used to work for Fox News), but his motive to anger the largest liberal state in this country reeks of flat-out authoritarianism. The ICE raids were, after all, spearheaded by White House Deputy Chief of Staff and wannabe Nazi douchebag Stephen Miller.

As of this Blog entry, the National Guard has arrived in Los Angeles...so we'll see what happens if protests continue in my hometown.

Combine this weekend's development with the fact that Trump—a 5-time draft dodger—is planning to host a North Korean-style military parade in Washington, D.C. next Saturday (June 14, which is the Dotard's birthday), and you have the makings of fascism in the world's only superpower. And let's not forget that the parade will cost up to $45 million in American taxpayer money when all is said and done.

To make this post relevant to Andor again, Trump continues to show that he's the "monster" that Palpatine was in the Star Wars galaxy, according to Mon Mothma. Just as how the Rebel Alliance continued to take shape while the Empire was trying to consolidate its power in that fictional galaxy, an anti-MAGA rebellion needs to continue taking shape across the United States of America in real life. Carry on.

This is so wrong. All to feed the ego of a mad tyrant who never had the balls to serve. This is not what we do in America. This is so fucking wrong. Makes me so sad. And so angry.👇 https://t.co/ZmDcwLovhA

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) June 7, 2025

Welcome to Donald Trump’s America

pic.twitter.com/7VLKrSoAQY

— Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆 (@RachelBitecofer) June 7, 2025

“Tasted a little tear gas— tasted like fascism” pic.twitter.com/o7SLl4ZWnV

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 8, 2025

ANDOR: It's Been One Week Since the Best Star Wars Show in the Disney Era Came to an End...

So last Tuesday, the final three episodes for Season 2 of Andor premiered on Disney+...and all I can say is: Well-done, Tony Gilroy!

The Star Wars streaming series began with Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) infiltrating a top-secret Imperial facility to steal a prototype TIE Fighter, and concluded with Andor walking amongst his fellow Rebels at the base on Yavin 4 to embark on a mission that would directly lead into the events of 2016's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

In the 12 episodes that graced Andor: Season 2, we returned to the storylines of such formidable characters as Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau), Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay) and of course, Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) and Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). In Season 2 specifically, Rogue One characters Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), K-2SO (once again voiced and motion captured by Alan Tudyk) and Bail Organa (portrayed by Benjamin Bratt and not Jimmy Smits, respectively, on this show) made memorable appearances as well.

There are so many things to discuss about Andor: Season 2, but all I will say is that this show truly is The Empire Strikes Back of Star Wars Disney+ series. Andor's grittiness and extremely-grounded themes are things that we probably won't see much of in future Star Wars projects (especially in regards to the use of profanity like in Andor), unless an apt showrunner like Tony Gilroy has a major involvement in those productions.

The themes of both seasons of Andor definitely resonate in the real world...with Mon Mothma's brilliant Senate speech about the Ghorman Massacre in Season 2's Episode 9 (titled "Welcome to the Rebellion") lamenting about how we all fall victim to monsters who "scream the loudest" when truth is buried in the public discourse. Emperor Palpatine is the monster who Mothma was referring to on Andor, but in real life, the majority of the world who aren't right-wing radicals know who the monster is that's currently residing in the White House.

While the closing minutes of Season 2, Episode 12 (titled "Jedha, Kyber, Erso") focuses on the fateful mission that Cassian is about to embark on that will lead to his sacrifice in the climax of Rogue One, the final scene of Andor is a hopeful one: With Bix, Cassian's wife, walking in a wheat field of the planet Mina-Rau while cradling their newborn infant. It is sad to know that Cassian will never meet his offspring, but it is reassuring to know that he and Bix have brought a child into the Star Wars galaxy who will be able to see the sunrise that Cassian—and fellow Rebel heroes like Luthen Rael—won't get to see on their own.

Once again: Well-done, Tony Gilroy!