Welcome to The Cruelest Day, when, boundless and bare, the lonely and loony week stretches far ahead. Yes, it’s Tuesday, January 6, 2026, and National Cuddle Up Day. Here’s a kitten not only cuddling with a deer, but also making biscuits on the deer. Please don’t let it be AI!
First time seeing a kitten cuddling with a deer 🥺 pic.twitter.com/SsyBNsHHgS
— cats with powerful impression 🐾 (@catshealdeprsn) August 7, 2025
It’s also Apple Tree Day, National Shortbread Day, National King Cake Day (read about it here), Epiphany (that’s when king cakes are eaten), and National Bean Day. King Cakes contains a figure of the baby Jesus, usually in plastic (see below), and the person who bites Jesus wins a prize, often having to buy next year’s king cake, which is not really a prize. And couldn’t you choke on a plastic Jesus, or break your dental work?
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 6 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*After his “takeover” of Venezuela, Trump is now, Putinlike, thinking of other ways to expand the American Empire. Colombia is on the radar, and now he’s revived talk about the U.S. needing to take over Greenland!
Barely 48 hours after toppling the leader of Venezuela and asserting U.S. rights to the country’s oil, President Trump threatened Colombia with a similar fate, declared that Cuba was not worth invading because “it’s ready to fall,” and once again claimed that Greenland needed to come under American control as an issue of national security.
Mr. Trump’s claims, in interviews on Sunday and then a lengthy back-and-forth with reporters aboard Air Force One as it returned from his private club in Florida, offered a glimpse of how emboldened he felt after the quick capture of Nicolás Maduro, the strongman who was seized on narco-trafficking charges.
“We’re in charge” of Venezuela, Mr. Trump claimed, as he described his plans to breathe new life into the Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 foundational statement of U.S. claims over the Western Hemisphere.
Or, more specifically, he invoked a more recent update that he refers to, characteristically, after himself: the “Donroe doctrine.”
Mr. Trump never described his philosophy in detail, or whether it applied beyond the Saturday attack on Caracas. But he certainly suggested that he could use the forces amassed in the Caribbean for new purposes, this time aimed at Colombia and its president, Gustavo Petro.
The country, he claimed, was “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”
“He’s not going to be doing it for very long,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories. He’s not going to be doing it.” Asked whether the United States would conduct an operation against Colombia, the president said: “It sounds good to me.”
And let’s not forget Greenland, which formally belongs to Denmark, a member of both the EU and NATO:
But the logic of this past weekend would suggest that Mr. Trump now believes the way is clear to claim resources that, in his view, the United States cannot live without. He is already setting up a parallel argument for Greenland which may — or may not — have substantial, recoverable rare earths.
“We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,’’ Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday night. “Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.”
“Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he added. He said that to boost security for Greenland, “it added one more dog sled.”
Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, was clearly rattled earlier in the day by Mr. Trump’s renewed interest in the vast, if frozen, territory.
“It makes absolutely no sense to talk about the U.S. needing to take over Greenland,” Ms. Frederiksen wrote on social media. “The U.S. has no right to annex any of the three countries in the Danish Kingdom.”
I had no idea that “Greenland was covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.” Maybe they are referring to “the Arctic,” but Denmark’s prime minister is right and even Trump isn’t stupid enough to try to annex Greenland.
*Trying to overwhelm the American blockade of Venezuelan oil, at least 16 sanctioned tankers are fleeing into the Caribbean, hoping to evade capture by turning off their transponders and moving en masse.
At least 16 oil tankers hit by U.S. sanctions appear to have made an attempt to evade a major American naval blockade on Venezuela’s energy exports over the last two days, in part by disguising their true locations or turning off their transmission signals.
For weeks, the ships had been spotted on satellite imagery docked in Venezuelan ports, according to an analysis by The New York Times. But by Saturday, in the wake of President Nicholas Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces, all were gone from those locations.
Four have been tracked by satellite sailing east 30 miles from shore, using fake ship names and misrepresenting their positions, a deceptive tactic known as “spoofing.” These four have left port without the interim government’s authorization, according to internal communications from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and two people in the Venezuelan oil industry, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. The departures could be seen as an early act of defiance of interim President Delcy Rodríguez’s control.
The other 12 are not broadcasting any signals and have not been located in new imagery.
. . .So far, U.S. forces have confronted three tankers trying to trade Venezuelan oil. One, called Skipper, was halted and seized by the Coast Guard on Dec. 10, on its way to China. A second, the Centuries, was halted and boarded, but not seized, on Dec. 20, and a third, then called the Bella 1, now Marinera, is still being pursued by U.S. forces.
In response to questions from The Times, a U.S. official on Sunday said that “the quarantine is in effect focusing on sanctioned shadow vessels transporting sanctioned” Venezuelan oil.
The tankers’ evasion strategies as part of this latest exodus appear to be relying on deception, but also saturation. At least three of the ships were in proximity as they left Venezuelan waters in the same direction, suggesting at least some coordination.
. . .Fifteen of the 16 ships that were on the move on Saturday were under U.S. sanctions for hauling Iranian and Russian oil.
. . . .The techniques used to skirt the sanctions are part of a modern-day arsenal of deception used by a loose-knit group of illicit tankers known as “the ghost fleet.” They include broadcasting and painting on the hull the names of vessels that have been decommissioned, and spoofing their locations to appear elsewhere.
If the sanctioned tankers stay in Venezuela, they could easily be boarded by U.S. forces, so I guess they’ve made the decision to take off. And their departure does not bode well for the new President, who seems to have some misguided support from “President” Trump.
*According to Olivia Reingold at the Free Press, Venezuelans in NYC are peeved that their new Mayor opposed the capture and arrest of Maduro and his wife in Venezuela.
On New Year’s Eve Vanessa Sanchez ate 12 grapes, as is customary in Latin America, making a wish for each one. Her first wish was for God to save Venezuela from Nicolás Maduro, the socialist president whose brutal rule drove her to flee the country nine years ago.
When her phone began to buzz on Saturday with news that the U.S. had captured Maduro, she could hardly believe it.
“This is what all Venezuelans wished for,” said Sanchez, who lives in Port Washington, Long Island. “We were waiting 25 years for this.”
Despite her brush with socialism, Sanchez, 32, told me she wasn’t opposed to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who was sworn in just last week. “He’s young—I feel like he knows what the people need,” she said. Then she saw Mamdani’s post on X criticizing Trump’s capture of the Venezuelan dictator.
“Unilaterally attacking a sovereign nation is an act of war and a violation of federal and international law,” Mamdani wrote, calling it a “blatant pursuit of regime change” and promising to protect New York City’s Venezuelan community.
“He’s crazy,” she said, shaking her head when I met her on Sunday afternoon in Corona, Queens. “He needs to live in Venezuela for one year. He wouldn’t be saying that anymore.”Since Saturday a split-screen reaction has played out in New York City, where Venezuelans have made up the largest number of migrants since 2022, according to a 2024 New York Times article. On Saturday, dueling rallies took over Times Square, with celebratory Venezuelans dancing through the streets just hours after demonstrators showed up chanting “hands off Venezuela.” Similar scenes unfolded outside the federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan and the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are currently being held as federal prosecutors pursue criminal charges against them.
Almost immediately, as news of Maduro’s capture began to spread online, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) started to organize against the Trump administration. Since 2017, Mamdani has belonged to the group as a dues-paying member. On Saturday, the DSA released a statement demanding the return of Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, an end to the “failed” war on drugs, and a “U.S. foreign policy centered on peace, multilateralism, and respect for national sovereignty and self-determination.”
. . .On Saturday, a number of prominent figures within the Democratic Party condemned the military operation, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former vice president Kamala Harris, and Senator Ruben Gallego.
“It’s not a good look,” said Daniel Di Martino, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank. Di Martino left Venezuela in 2016 to attend Indiana University in Indianapolis on a full-ride scholarship. “You might disagree with what President Trump did, but we must celebrate that he captured an indicted criminal, and he did it with zero U.S. casualties.”
Here’s Mamdani’s tweet. I have a feeling he’s going to be pronouncing on foreign affairs at least as often as he does on matters affecting NYT. I’ve left in one response:
“Unilaterally attacking a sovereign nation is an act of war and a violation of federal and international law” – sorry I thought this was a statement from October 8th 2023, but I think you had phrased that one differently…
— Ami Kozak (@amiKozak) January 4, 2026
*Although Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota kept pushing back against people calling out the childcare and healthcare fraud in Minnesota, he’s finally given up: Walz has decided not to run for another term.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has dropped his bid for a third term amid a massive welfare-fraud scandal, a remarkable political fall for a politician who had ascended to the national stage in 2024 as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the state’s senior senator and a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, is seriously considering a run for his job, three Democrats informed of her thinking said. She met with Walz on Sunday, the officials said.
“As I reflected on this moment with my family and my team over the holidays, I came to the conclusion that I can’t give a political campaign my all,” Walz said.
“Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences,” he said. “So I’ve decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work.”
The large-scale theft—still being tabulated and growing—has been a major distraction for Walz and his fellow Democrats as their party struggles without a national leader or any real power in Washington.
The controversy has also handed a political weapon to Republicans, who have been capitalizing on the scandal to portray the state and Walz as a national symbol of government waste and Democratic mismanagement. Trump administration officials have criticized him on a nearly daily basis and amplified videos critical of him.
. . .The incumbent’s decision triggers a scramble for Democrats to find a candidate in a state that leans blue, but one that also has a legislature nearly evenly divided between the two parties.
Other possible Minnesota Democrats vying for the governor’s post include Secretary of State Steve Simon or Attorney General Keith Ellison. But Klobuchar would be the most dominant candidate with the biggest following and political organization in the state.
Well, Walz wasn’t doing so well with the scandal. What puzzles me is why Amy Klobuchar would give up a plum job as Senator for a measly Governorship. Does she want to move back to Minnesota for good?
*I discovered that the UPI not only has a news site, but also one with a big “Odd News” page, that is better than the AP’s “oddities” page as it has more items. Here’s one about an escaped and recaptured emu:
A pet emu was captured in Arizona a few days after escaping from her owners’ home amid New Year’s Day fireworks.
Josh Kondziola and Savannah Smith said their emu, Kevin, escaped from the yard of their Peoria home on New Year’s Day.
They said Kevin had escaped before, but didn’t get far.
“When we first moved into this house, she did the same thing. She flipped open the gate latch and escaped,” Kondziola told 12 News. “But that time it was easy because we watched her get out, and we just went and got her. But we thought we had done the gate up where she couldn’t get out anymore.”
The couple posted about Kevin’s escape on Facebook, and sightings started to roll in.
“There’s been a lot of people, especially from Facebook, that have been out looking or who will send me little updates,” Smith said. “These two little boys got a picture of Kevin and sent it over to their mom, who messaged me on Facebook, but it is crazy to see how many people are here for the emu.”
The duo said Kevin was safely captured Sunday.
Here are the three Facebook posts about Kevin’s escape and recapture:
He’s a big ‘un! Kevin is a very weird name for an emu.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili feigns ignorance:
Szaron: Do you know the answer to the question…
Hili: I doubt it, but you can always ask it to keep the old tradition alive.
In Polish:
Szaron: Czy znasz odpowiedź na pytanie…
Hili: Wątpię, ale zawsze możesz je zadać dla podtrzymania starej tradycji.
*******************
From CinEmma:
From Give Me A Sign:
From Meow, Incorporated:
Masih continues to post during the turmoil in Iran. And have a gander at this one. There’s a note about the hospital attack in a Guardian article about the killing of over 20 protestors
BREAKING
Armed regime forces carried out a brutal attack on a hospital in Ilam.
They broke down hospital doors, stormed inside, and opened fire on civilians and the injured.What the regime is doing to the people of Iran is a crime against humanity.
Be the voice of the Iranian… pic.twitter.com/QBgWIlByFs— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 4, 2026
From Malcolm, “a dream fulfilled”:
Amid laughter and hugs, they took him to fulfill a dream: to see the sea.
His friends accompanied him to the shore, where happiness was reflected on his face and the waves seemed to celebrate with him.pic.twitter.com/xMmqqagSml
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 2, 2026
One from Luana; Mamdani apparently deleted someone’s tweet he didn’t like:
Hey @NYCMayor – I responded to your tweet yesterday with a few constructive suggestions as you enter office.
It looks like you hid the reply after it got substantial support.
Hopefully I am wrong about that, but multiple people have confirmed they can no longer see the reply.… https://t.co/b0L8jnUIM8 pic.twitter.com/Kwf42jGOmm
— Anthony Pompliano 🌪 (@APompliano) January 4, 2026
From Larry, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office:
My heart goes out to those of you sad to be returning to work today. I’ve been on duty throughout the Christmas break, though my role includes unlimited napping and belly rubs – I recommend you look for a job that offers the same!
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) January 5, 2026
One from my feed; LOOK AT THESE SHEEP!
The Valais Blacknose sheep of the Swiss Alps
📹AI
pic.twitter.com/MMgXulTh33— Science girl (@sciencegirl) January 5, 2026
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Czech Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was ten years old. https://t.co/NP8Lmcg6E0
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) January 6, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, a mystery: an organism that has been living the same traces on the sea floor for 500 million years, and we don’t know what it is. See the link to the paper.
As well as being a fabulously unresolved biological detective story, it also shows why deep-sea mining is A VERY BAD THING.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-01-05T18:08:57.908Z
Anne Frank’s stepsister just died at 96 (her father Otto, the only survivor of the Holocaust, remarried after the war to a woman who already had a daughter, Eva, who was herself a Holocaust survivor. Born in 1929, Eva was the same age as Anne Frank.
Anne Frank stepsister and Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss dies aged 96
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (6 Jan 1883-1931)
sigh…
Gibran also said, “Let there be spaces in your togetherness.” Our necks are too bent by Trump. (As the rabbi replied to the rabbinical student’s question, “Is there a proper blessing for the Czar?”, “May God bless and keep the Czar – far away from us!?)
“Vanessa Sanchez [said] “He’s crazy . . . .He needs to live in Venezuela for one year. He wouldn’t be saying that anymore.”
It’s good for Ms. Sanchez that she herself was not living in Venezuela a few days ago, unlike the Venezuelan citizens who were killed in (what Viceroy Rubio termed) that “law enforcement action.” Will she be uttering any wistful and regretful sentiments regarding their demise (along with her gratitude that no U.S. service members were killed or maimed for life on her behalf)?
I look forward to her holding forth at length about her views on national sovereignty (and perhaps also on “Amuricun Exceptionalism”) and whether that includes Venezuelans solely deciding for themselves what that constitutes. And also whether she thinks Trump’s high-minded motivation for regime change was the liberation of Venezuelans or the liberation of Venezuelans’ petroleum.
A majority of those killed in the raid to capture Maduro were Cuban.
Sal Mercogliano, on his “What’s Up With Shipping” you tube channel, posted about 20 minutes devoted to the bolting tankers yesterday. Includes nyt info plus additional material. Sal is a merchant mariner and professor of maritime history at Campbell University as well as posting regularly on his youtube site. Url for this edition should be
Thanks Jim.
best,
D.A.
NYC
Sal is a national treasure.
The blacknose sheep are truly cool to watch.
The name Kevin for the (female) emu may be a reference to the movie “Up”
Thanks. I was wondering about the female Kevin😻
And don’t forget the emu Emmanuel Todd Lopez!
For a short time Emmanuel Emu was the most famous Australian-American!
Emu rock star from Oz, but this guy has legs!
D.A.
NYC
I got such a kick out of Emanuel!
https://fb.watch/EteHwisfRE/?fs=e
Couldn’t find the one where she calls him by his full name😹
Found it!
I assumed Kevin the female emu was trans!
They should call her “Bruce” to keep things clear.
We once had a Muscovy duck named Herman. One day, Herman started to lay eggs. We still called her Herman.
“[E]ven Trump isn’t stupid enough to try to annex Greenland.”
It’s likely a mistake to underestimate the sheer magnitude of Trump’s stupidity — or arrogance.
I was going to say the same. Trump brought it up again in all seriousness.
The graft is better. Seriously(?), though, it’s probably to position herself for a Presidential run.
That is what I thought.
Charitably, if she wins she get to actually do something useful (not saying she will, but governors at least have the potential). She also gets to appoint her successor. And, I agree, the success rate is better in a presidential run than for senators.
If she loses, she still has 4 more years as Senator to try to pretend that she never ran.
Regarding Mamdani and the “warmth of collectivism”, here is a tweet with a video of Cea Weaver, his Tenant Director, talking about making property a “collective good”, especially the property of white people.
Thanks, I’d missed that fresh horror. For NYers, Dr.B, these revelations carry an extra level of dread.
It is going to be a bumpy ride here. A wildly antisemitic Muslim communist. You’d need powerful computers to imagine a worse mayor.
D.A.
NYC
I took a gander at the Constitution of the State of New York (why are State constitutions so long?). Here are some relevant statements:
Those are, of course, in addition to the protections of the U.S. Constitution under the 14th Amendment.
I’ve increasingly wondered why more politicians are not challenged about their oath of office, which in the case of NYC, includes an oath to uphold both the State and the Federal Constitutions? Mamdani’s prior statements certainly suggest that he does not intend to abide by his oath.
I think they call it “taqiyya”.
To be grudgingly fair to this dangerous fool, she did say that POCs who own property (implying there are very few) will also “have a different relationship to property” than they do now. It’s because white people own almost all the property that they will be feel the warmth of dispossession most acutely, collectively speaking (of course.) The reason white girl Ms. Weaver can talk this way about whacking white people so nonchalantly is presumably because she doesn’t own property herself and neither do the legions of POCs who voted for the Mayor. It’s not quite Queers for Palestine.
This is what could have been predicted to happen (and probably was) when people who didn’t own property were nonetheless allowed to vote.
Does the City of New York have the cash to buy out all the property owners at fair market value? Or are they imagining cheaper methods, like violence?
Heading on sheep movie says that it’s AI.
Somebody has to make a meme of all those sly, sleezy tankers getting the hell out of Dodge (“left without harbormaster permission”!) the other day. Maybe with Benny Hill music (yackity yack?) playing. Hilarious.
More seriously… I wonder where they’re off to? The big Iranian and and Russian “shadow fleets” are an interesting new thing.
“New York City, where Venezuelans have made up the largest number of migrants since 2022” —
Indeed they have – it has been quite noticeable here. Pros and cons of that but there must have been a LOT of them b/c I’ve never noticed such a large demographic wave from one place before.
Love the escaped emu. They’re incredibly cool (and angry) animals.
D.A.
NYC
The Benny Hill music was “Yakety Sax”. Chet Atkins recorded a guitar version called “Yakety Axe”: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y_M8RqUC89o&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD
“(And angry) animals”…just getting touch with their inner dinosaur, David. Ha!
Greenland is part of a NATO-member country. If attacked by a non-NATO adversary, NATO is obligated (in theory) to come to the rescue. Consequently, it seems that the U.S. taking over Greenland would have only limited strategic military benefit. It’s already under NATO protection.
Maybe Trump is really trying to bully Denmark into letting the U.S. put some more military installations in Greenland—to balance Russian and Chinese interests in the polar region. Maybe he’s angling for the natural resources that lie exposed along the shoreline and elsewhere under a mile of ice—or for the right of American companies to exploit them. In other words, maybe Trump’s sabre-rattling (against a fellow NATO ally) is really a ploy to get something less than Greenland in its entirety.
Of course, as others have noted, maybe he’s just hyper-ambitious and crazy.
James Carville is claiming Trump’s action in Venezuela (and presumably his threats against Greenland) are diversionary tactics. They’re being used to distract the public’s interest in the Epstein Files and stop the criticism against him.
It’s as likely as any other motive, I guess. The country is being run by a reality show producer.
I’ve read this also from another source. It’s a distraction from the meltdown of Venezuela, Epstein, Jack Smith inquiry… which he made statements such as this,
“Smith said he came to believe that Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, tweet attacking Pence while he was at the Capitol “without question” exacerbated the danger to Pence’s life.”
I beleive also IIRC the Danish PM said the US have pretty much a free run over Greenland already, alright, what is the point.
Well perhaps we now know why it has surfaced again. Light headed power from Maduro’ s capture. Greenland’s resources look good for revenue capture for moi, the “king” has a runaway mouth and loves to troll. No surprises there.
Yeah, no surprises there. Shock and disgust, but no surprise.
And his latest self-aggrandising renaming, the “Donroe doctrine,” is actually kind of poetic. But I would prefer a more modern and descriptive one. Fortunately there is an anagram that does the job: the “eMoron doctrine”. Goes well with ‘iDJT” too.
And re not being stupid enough to try to annex Greenland, stupidity isn’t the issue. More than a few non-stupid people have varying degrees of a well-studied mental condition¹ which has these core traits (from Wikipedia):
● Arrogant and deceitful interpersonal style: impression management or superficial charm, inflated and grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying/deceit, and manipulation for personal gain.
● Deficient affective experience: lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect (coldness and unemotionality), callousness and lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility for one’s own actions.
● Impulsive and irresponsible lifestyle: impulsivity, sensation-seeking and risk-taking, irresponsible and unreliable behavior, financially parasitic lifestyle, and a lack of realistic, long-term goals.
. . . . .
¹ E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_in_Suits
😁🫣🤔 real snakes are true to themselves and their behaviour instinctual by nature and a darn sight more sane… LOL!
that said I am unequivocally a no free will individual and Trump needs to be somewhere where no harm comes to him and nearly everyone else. There are some (in my dreams) I’d unashamedly slap…
Well, with no free will you couldn’t help yourself. 🙂
You have this all wrong. Trump went after Maduro to distract folks from Walzgate.
No, I would not like to unknowingly bite into a piece of hard plastic, even if it was Jesus.
Those AI sheep are adorable and would make a fantastic plush toy. Very huggable.
Maduro being removed from power is a good thing. Everything else about this is wrong and can lead to destabilization. Trump’s commentary since the operation is pouring gasoline on the fire.
Featured in Cool Hand Luke (1967):
(More verses at https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/eddie-marrs/plastic-jesus)
Putin and Maduro are pals. Trump takes orders from Putin. Trump is very pro-Maduro. He even gave him a free orange jumpsuit and hotel room!