B ehold the Republic’s latest miracle: a renaissance of remedies that cure everything except ignorance. The week brought panaceas by press conference, committees remade in the image of their hecklers, and a federal steward whose ledger smells faintly of liniment.

The Tylenol Jeremiad

Once more the carnival barker points at the medicine cabinet and cries there, there lies the villain! Today’s suspect is acetaminophen in pregnancy— yesterday it was vaccines—tomorrow it will be moonbeams and miasmas. The evidence, such as it is, remains a rickety ladder of correlations: studies with recall bias, dosing fog, and confounders enough to populate a small frontier town.

The Claim: Tylenol causes autism.
The Reality: Associations are inconsistent and encumbered by confounders; causation is unproven and loudly presumed.
The Grift: Panic sells “alternatives,” panels get stacked, and the public square swaps peer review for a bullhorn.

“Correlation, dressed in lace, calls herself Causation and expects a dowry.”

Editor’s note: Consult clinicians; do not take medical counsel from a press conference with a merch table.

Act II: The Alchemy of Folates

Enter folinic acid—leucovorin—trumpeted by courtiers as a curative banner for autism itself. In the ledger’s fine print, however, one finds a narrow indication for rare folate disorders that may mimic autistic traits. Between a precise therapy and a universal “cure” yawns a chasm across which only marketing can leap.

“From indication to proclamation: a coach and several horses.”

Act III: The Committee Recast

Having failed to defeat vaccines with data, the zealots pursue victory by venue: reseat the review boards, season them with professional skeptics, and declare the stew bipartisan. Thus are recommendations thinned to homeopathy—dilute, dilute, until only the aroma remains.

Act IV: The Shopkeeper at the Treasury Window

Onto the stage strides Dr. Mehmet Oz, sanctified not by peer review but by prime time, now presiding over the nation’s public insurance purse. One needn’t allege a single illicit coin to see the farce: the supplementeer appointed comptroller of science. When the bazaar encircles the hospital, receipts begin to masquerade as evidence.

Act V: The Megaphone & The Medicine Wagon

And through it all, the President rings the bell: numbers inflated to operatic tragedy, anecdotes anointed as gospel, the square of certainty hammered onto the round peg of reality. The show must go on; the script is revised nightly; the audience pays at the door.

Tylenol Jeremiad: a fright without foundation sturdy enough to carry policy.
Leucovorin Leap: a narrow therapy stretched on the rack of hype.
Stacked Committees: when referees join the hooligans’ club.
Oz at CMS: the cashier counting coins beside the examining table.

Finale: The Toll

Panic is a splendid salesman. It buys audiences, sells supplements, and mortgages the future. The cost is measured in missed vaccinations, preventable illness, and a public square where every whisper outsings a library. This is not public health; it is commerce in the costume of cure.

The Week That Was (Or Wasn’t)

September 15–21, 2025

What a week it was, dear readers — a procession of indignities so thick that even the stenographers of Bedlam might hesitate to record them. Yet, in service of posterity and our collective incredulity, The Ledger dutifully sets quill to parchment.

The Late Jimmy Kimmel

The week began with the “cancellation” of Jimmy Kimmel — not the ordinary show-business sort, but the political guillotine kind. His show shuttered under pressure from the regime, a cautionary tale to any entertainer who dares to tell a joke not pre-screened by courtiers in MAGA livery. The chill upon comedy is palpable: laughter itself now requires a permit, embossed with an eagle clutching a golf club.

A Crackdown in Search of a Cause

From Hollywood’s dimmed lights we pivot to Washington’s darker corridors, where the Trump administration flirted openly with designating liberal and progressive non-profits as “terrorist organizations.” Thus the Red Cross and the PTA may soon find themselves in the company of al-Qaeda, their bake sales subject to federal interdiction, their car washes wiretapped.

Tea with the King

Next came the curious spectacle of President Trump’s visit to Buckingham Palace. His Majesty endured the encounter with the sort of strained courtesy reserved for gouty relatives and intrusive plumbers. Trump emerged beaming, convinced he had secured not only Britain’s loyalty but possibly the monarchy itself — a merger he proposed to rename “The United Trumpdom.”

The Price of Silence

Revelations trickled forth that Tom Homan, that stout tribune of deportations, had once pocketed a $50,000 bribe. A Department of Justice investigation was swiftly smothered with a Trump-branded pillow. One must admire the efficiency: bribery and exoneration conducted in the same fiscal quarter!

The Vaccinophobe Rides Again

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., still astride his rickety steed of pseudoscience, thundered against vaccines with all the fervor of a medieval barber recommending bloodletting. His followers nodded solemnly, as if polio were but a fairy tale told by Big Pharma to frighten children into washing their hands.

Arithmetic by Hyperbole

The President, never one to be constrained by fact, declared that “300 million Americans” had perished of drug overdoses last year. A remarkable feat, given that the population of the United States is but 330 million. By his reckoning, the nation is composed chiefly of ghosts, voting reliably in battalions.

The Venezuelan Vendetta

All the while, American ordnance continued to rain upon Venezuelan vessels — no trial, no hearing, just summary judgment delivered by missile. The administration insists this is not “war” but “extrajudicial nautical housekeeping.” The fish, alas, were not consulted.

The Apotheosis of Kirk

The week closed with a pageant at State Farm Stadium in Arizona: the memorial-cum-deification of Charlie Kirk. Billed as a solemn occasion, it unfolded instead as a professional wrestling spectacular — fog machines, thunderous entrance music, and the President delivering a eulogy equal parts martyrdom, rally cry, and campaign commercial. The faithful wept, shouted hosannas, and purchased merch in bulk.

And thus, the week passed: laughter outlawed, dissent criminalized, monarchs bemused, bribes forgiven, science denied, numbers inflated, ships obliterated, and a fallen pundit canonized with the pomp of Rome and the showmanship of WWE. Truly, America remains the greatest show on earth — though one fears the tent poles are splintering.

Try to Remember the Kind of September

A Ledger of Inanities, Pageantries, and Preventable Plagues

September, once a gentle custodian of cider and remembrance, has arrived instead as a carnival barker with a cracked bell. Behold a month where Nature performs catastrophe, Officialdom performs competence, and Everyone Else performs for the camera. We have set quill to parchment to swirl it all together—storms and sermons, moonwalks and mandates, pomp and poltroonery—into a single ledger of the ludicrous.

I. Processions of the Preventable

The Surgeon General of Freedom™ trumpets a new dispensation: mandates banished, childhood diseases invited. In the public square, a parade of Little Deaths—Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Polio—carry pennants like alumni returning for Homecoming. “Personal choice,” he intones, and the viruses curtsey. Leeches polish their resumes.

ASIDE: On Pedagogy & Tablets. In Texas, pious décor is once more proposed as pedagogy—Commandments mounted like antlers in a schoolhouse. We await the appendix tablet reading, “Special Terms & Conditions Apply,” signed by an attorney who moonlights as a prophet.

II. Pageantry for the Camera, Penance for the Clerk

Cabinet courtiers beam compulsory “praise reels” to the provinces. Somewhere in a ranger station, a bear signs for the parcel while a junior naturalist mouths along to the weekly encomium. Elsewhere, a Superintendent preaches rectitude to a lens he forgets is still on—like a bishop explaining thrift from a chaise longue.

Supplementary curios: A town-hall petitioner moonwalks into a tax speech; a mountaineer in an ice-cream cone costume ascends with dry ice and mercy; a tote bag declares “Definitely Not A Bag Full of Drugs” with all the sincerity of a campaign promise.

III. Nature’s Theatre & the Bureaucrat’s Umbrella

Floods rehearse for their Broadway transfer; a tornado auditions in a coastal town; solar farms quarrel with forests as if trees were a rumor. Bridges shrug beneath trucks, rails argue with schedules, and the paperwork, ever diligent, insists all was compliant on page 7, subsection (b).

FIELD NOTES. When the waters come, the press conference arrives in matching jackets. The podium is waterproof; the truth is not.

IV. Diplomacy as Pantomime

In the North, a summit unspools like a holiday pageant: applause too loud, concessions too quiet, a map redrawn in the footnotes. Far across seas, a state visit arrives with carriages, plumes, and a hat brim deep enough to hide an era. The crowd is kept at a respectful distance; the irony is not.

V. The Culture of Consequence, Deferred

A pundit is harmed on a podium, and the nation sprints to its corners to assign omens. Another ex-chief finds himself in a courtroom measuring the length of history in sentencing guidelines. Grief is real; so too is the choreography that follows. Our politics remains a church of spectacle with a collection plate for rage.

VI. Accounts Receivable: September

Tally the ledger: Public health in arrears, infrastructure in dudgeon, decorum in receivership. The month presents its invoice in triplicate and requests immediate remittance of our attention. We pay it, of course—dearly—because absurdity is legal tender and spectacle, the national bank.

Housekeeping. If you spotted an absurdity we missed, leave it with the clerk by the door; it will be indexed under Chronicles of Misrule and shelved beside “Festival of the Preventable.”

💉Chronicles of Misrule:
Florida Declares War on Germ Theory

In this latest entry from our national asylum, Florida’s Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, has decreed that vaccine mandates — those dusty old bulwarks against polio, measles, and the poxes of yesteryear — are nothing more than a modern form of slavery. Thus, with a flourish of rhetoric more fit for antebellum melodrama than epidemiology, he proposes to strike them down.

One can almost hear the bacilli cheering.

Governor Ron DeSantis, flanking his medical freedom crusader, nodded along as if he were announcing a tax rebate, not the unraveling of a century of public health safeguards. Together they declared Florida to be the first state in the Union to dismantle all vaccine mandates, including those required for children to attend school. Why stop with smallpox eradication when you can invite it back for a victory lap?

Of course, some mandates are bound up in the dull cords of statute law. These, alas, require the Florida legislature’s complicity before being cast aside. But given the state’s political mood, one suspects the only debate will be whether to replace the school immunization form with a “Choose Your Own Adventure” pamphlet.

Health experts have sounded the alarm, warning that this gambit all but guarantees a revival of outbreaks thought buried with the phonograph. Their voices, alas, carry little weight in a political bazaar where “medical freedom” is hawked as though it were a tonic from a carnival tent.

To gild this farce, a new commission — styled the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) committee — has been conjured, chaired by First Lady Casey DeSantis. Its charter? To enshrine “parental rights” and “informed consent,” while leaving “community health” to fend for itself, like an orphan abandoned on the courthouse steps.

Thus Florida strides boldly into the 19th century, where maladies roam free and the physician’s kit once more features leeches, bloodletting, and perhaps a tincture of snake oil.

As the calendar staggers toward Labor Day, the Republic’s rulers have decided to treat the season as a festival of calamity. Below, in the spirit of a Victorian broadsheet, we catalogue their absurdities: each one a grotesque float in the parade of maladministration, trumpets blaring, banners sagging, and the onlookers too weary to boo.

Plague & Folly

The CDC Besieged by Visigoths

Science yields to spectacle

Once a citadel of public health, the Centers for Disease Control has become less a scientific institution than a coliseum where superstition and conspiracy fight to the death over the corpses of reason. The anti-vaccine horde, their helmets forged in Facebook furnaces and their spears sharpened on podcast rants, now stomp through Atlanta’s halls of epidemiology as if they were conquering Visigoths looting Rome. Career scientists, men and women trained to speak in cautious decimals and conditional clauses, now deliver their findings in nervous whispers, lest some belligerent apparatchik accuse them of treason against “freedom.” In place of method, we have memes; in place of progress, we have pandemonium.

Rome may have burned with fiddles; Atlanta smolders under hashtags and angry emojis.

Occupation

Washington Under Armed Lawn Care

When soldiers double as landscapers

The capital remains occupied by the federalized National Guard, a force summoned with the bluster of empire yet immediately assigned to the humble tasks of hedge-trimming and trash collection, thanks to the decapitation of the Park Service. Uniformed young men now stand guard over monuments by day and bag litter by night, proving that tyranny can indeed be a full-service operation. The White House, not content with its current fief, threatens to dispatch these gardener-garrisons to other American cities, curiously all with Black Democratic leadership—a coincidence so brazen it barely bothers to disguise itself. Thus occupation has become landscaping, and landscaping has become intimidation, all under the grand banner of “restoring order.”

Commerce

Tariffs Toppled in Court

The Emperor of Duties is found duty-less

The U.S. Court of Appeals, in a decision that rang like a gavel dropped on a tin pot, confirmed what trade lawyers had muttered for years: the President’s tariffs were unlawful concoctions, slapped on nations as casually as a drunkard slaps down cards in a rigged game. These levies, sold to the public as shields of sovereignty, proved in court to be mere vanity projects—contraband in the cloak of commerce. Business owners rejoice, lawyers sharpen their quills for fresh lawsuits, and the Administration, undeterred by legality, prepares to replace the struck-down duties with yet more unworkable edicts.

The tariff emperor, alas, wore no statutory clothes, and the courts have now shouted it from the rooftops.

Logistics

Package Pandemonium

When every trinket becomes taxable contraband

In a masterstroke of bureaucratic sadism, the President rescinded the de minimis rule that once allowed small imported parcels to slip easily through the channels of commerce. Now, each bracelet, book, or button arriving from abroad requires the full gauntlet of paperwork, as though the post were importing a battleship rather than a barrette. Customs clerks, who once breezed through shipments with rubber stamps, now perform the arithmetic of tariffs on items priced less than a sandwich. Online sellers howl, buyers gnash their teeth, and the postal service, never sprightly to begin with, sinks deeper into paralysis. The porch pirate is obsolete; the government has become his rival and superior.

Disasterpiece

Katrina Anniversary: FEMA Rehearses Its Old Lines

History repeats, with embellishments

On the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA and DHS unveiled not lessons learned but blunders reheated. Officials speak glowingly of preparedness even as communication lines fray, supply chains sputter, and coordination meetings collapse into farce. Survivors of the original calamity watch with horror as the same mistakes are polished and reissued, now with bonus features of callousness and graft. Far from inspiring confidence, the spectacle convinces citizens that the government has decided disaster is less something to prevent than something to monetize.

Decadence

The Epstein Necropolis

A scandal that refuses interment

Each week the Epstein affair returns like a revenant from the crypt, dragging with it fresh names, darker allegations, and new reasons to despair. The social elite, once draped in secrecy, are paraded naked through headlines, their connections laid bare like laundry flapping on the line. What should have been closure instead resembles an endless séance, where every disclosure summons two more questions. The Republic, watching aghast, comes to realize that its vaunted institutions have been held together by duct tape, hush money, and silence.

Blood & Silence

Another School, Another Mourning

The prayers come cheaper than chalk

Another school shooting marks another grim tally in a national ledger already blotched with blood. Politicians appear before cameras, their voices draped in solemnity, mouthing “thoughts and prayers” with the enthusiasm of bureaucrats reading grocery lists. Children crouch under desks, parents weep in parking lots, and yet the sale of firearms continues unchecked, defended by legislators whose allegiance is pledged more to donors than to the sanctity of classrooms. The repetition of tragedy has numbed the populace; horror has become routine, outrage a reflex, and reform a mirage forever shimmering on the horizon.

Farce

Jeanine Pirro v. The Sandwich

Indictments thinner than sliced ham

Once hailed as a prosecutor capable of indicting a ham sandwich, Jeanine Pirro now finds herself bested by actual sandwiches and the citizens who throw them. Grand juries, unimpressed by her theatrics, refuse to indict individuals whose “crimes” amount to tossing a Subway hoagie or outpacing an officer in brisk walk. What once passed for ferocity now resembles buffoonery, as Pirro’s vaunted prosecutorial edge is blunted by deli meats and common sense. The myth collapses, the legend curdles, and the television judge is left to scream into cameras rather than command a courtroom.

So ends the reign of the ham-sandwich oracle: felled not by felonies, but by farce.

Absurdity

Tariffs as Fitness Regimen

When higher prices equal “gains”

In perhaps the most surreal revelation of the week, insiders report that the President believes tariffs constitute a form of patriotic weight training. Rising prices for sneakers, bread, and household staples are described as “resistance workouts” for the working class, a peculiar gospel where the privilege of paying more is rebranded as a muscular contribution to national greatness. Thus the checkout counter becomes a gymnasium, and economic hardship is marketed as exercise. Citizens, groaning under the load, may soon discover their only gains are on the credit card statement.

Observe, dear reader, the flaxen-haired functionary who has mastered the rare art of governing by curtsey. Doug Burgum presides at Interior like a court chamberlain with a pocketful of smelling salts, forever prepared to revive the sovereign’s ego should it swoon. Where a steward of the public domain might once have tended wind and sun, our man tends instead to choreography—chiefly the weekly reel of required devotions, that ministry-approved pageant known within the corridors as Inside Interior, a “Dear Leader” varietal poured down the gullets of federal staff as compulsory viewing.

“The Praise Machine & The Quieted Winds.”

I. The Praise Factory

Interior employees, who surely joined to count bison and mend trails rather than clap on cue, are marched—figuratively if not yet literally—before screens to behold weekly encomia: Burgum in hard-hat, Burgum in suit, Burgum in the wild, while a dulcet narrator hymns the administration’s “fearless leadership.” A July 4th installment reportedly opened with the President dancing to “YMCA,” segued to a sizzle reel of tarmacs and construction-site hosannas, and concluded by instructing the republic in how to celebrate the holiday “the MAGA way.” :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}

II. The Ministry of No: Wind & Sun

Under Burgum’s eye, the Department has elevated itself from land steward to toll-keeper, interposing “enhanced” review at the Secretary’s level for virtually every wind and solar decision—leases, rights-of-way, consultations, the lot—thus converting the renewable queue into a genteel traffic jam. :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}

What the bottleneck misses, the bolt-cutters meet: project approvals clawed back, fees and incentives reversed, offshore zones rescinded, and emblematic ventures (see: Lava Ridge) ceremonially halted or harried. Even neutral chroniclers have begun enumerating the slow unmaking of the sector—offshore pauses here, rule rescissions there, a general policy of “not so fast, sunshine.” :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}

III. Curriculum Vitae, Gilded

Confirmed by the Senate with bipartisan bonhomie, Burgum arrived with the mien of a tech magnate turned plains philosopher and now applies both to a great national experiment: can a Cabinet secretary convert a conservation agency into a compliment factory while “rebalancing” its energy posture toward the combustible and away from the celestial? The votes said yes; the park rangers’ eyebrows, less so. :contentReference[oaicite:3]{index=3}

Charge Sheet (Select Articles of Misrule)

Instituted a weekly, mandatory “Dear Leader”-style video ritual for Interior staff (Inside Interior). :contentReference[oaicite:4]{index=4}
Imposed Secretary-level “elevated review” on wind & solar actions, converting process into purgatory. :contentReference[oaicite:5]{index=5}
Set about rescinding renewable-friendly rules and pausing/canceling marquee projects on land and sea. :contentReference[oaicite:6]{index=6}
Ascended to the office with a lopsided mandate to favor extractive “dominance” over stewardship. :contentReference[oaicite:7]{index=7}

IV. Judgment of the Ledger

If Mike Pence was the apostle of deferential silence, Burgum is the cantor of compulsory chorus—a courtier’s courtier, granted dominion over deserts and deltas, who spends it commissioning odes to the throne while the wind is told to wait its turn and the sun to wipe its feet. A Secretary of the Interior, yes—but chiefly the Secretary of Supplication.

🕯️ What Fresh Hell...?
A Prognostic Pamphlet of Coming Absurdities
August 25–31, 2025

Lo, dear reader, brace thy spirit and polish thy lorgnette, for we embark upon a weekly ritual of augury: a cracked crystal ball held up to the flickering gaslight of American politics. This is no rear-view ledger of calamities past, but a pamphlet of calamities yet to come. Welcome to the inaugural issue of What Fresh Hell...?

I. The Anointed Saint of Ghislaine Maxwell

Beatification, you say? The only incense Ms. Maxwell shall sniff this week comes not from holy thuribles but from the fetid air of the federal prison yard. Yet rumors persist of her “anointment,” a wicked jest that hints at our modern church of notoriety. The Department of Justice toys with her testimony, but sainthood? Nay, not even the most desperate bishop would dare.

II. Diplomacy is Hard — Or, “Why Won’t Ukraine Just Give Up?”

President Trump, bedecked in self-importance, continues his merry-go-round of diplomacy: ultimatums issued, deadlines ignored, and hot-mic revelations that betray his yearning for Putin’s personal favor. Europe wrings its hands, Ukraine bleeds, and the White House chalkboard still reads “Peace in Two Weeks.” The carnival spins on, nausea included free of charge.

Forecast: High probability of empty threats, with scattered sanctions in the afternoon.

III. Posse Commi-whatus? The March of Troops in American Streets

Law and order, declaims the President — and lo! columns of federal troops descend upon Democratic cities like a badly rehearsed opera chorus. Washington, New York, Chicago, now Baltimore: all to be pacified, though their crime rates be falling. Governors protest, critics invoke the Posse Comitatus Act, but the bayonets glint merrily in the summer sun.

Forecast: Martial pageantry with scattered constitutional crises after dusk.

IV. Additional Oddities for the Week Ahead

Canada’s Cudgel: PM Carney claps politely at Trump’s “peace plan,” while dangling the prospect of Canadian boots on Ukrainian soil.
Russia’s Fortress Belt: Moscow demands a thirty-mile buffer zone in Ukraine, though its own troops perish by the thousands. A belt, yes — one fashioned of corpses.
Security Guarantees: Europe debates sending troops, intelligence, and prayers. Trump nods sagely, provided Ukraine never, ever joins NATO.

Thus concludes this week’s Almanack of Atrocities. Consult again next week — if the Republic still stands and our printing press has not been commandeered by federal marshals.

— The Panican Ledger

The republic, that wheezing bellows, spent another week converting folly into policy and policy into price tags. Below find a tidy enumeration of calamities, suitable for pasting into the family scrapbook between Grandma’s ration cards and last year’s hurricane prep list.

Trade

“Only the Shampoo Must Suffer”: The Stealth Tariff Addendum

400+ British products suddenly discover the American taste for customs duties

Washington’s tariff roulette wheel clicked once more and landed on miscellany: washing machines, shampoos, motorcycles, and even the toddler’s furniture. The merry twist? Assessments hinge on metal bits tucked within—an accountant’s picnic and an exporter’s migraine.

Progress, in this telling, is a pile of forms atop a stack of invoices balanced on a sea‑freight delay.

Household

Back‑to‑School, Forward‑to‑Prices

Parents meet the tariff gremlin at the stationery aisle

Retailers whisper sweet nothings about holding the line on “select items,” but the ledger tells a harsher tale: families budgeting princely sums to kit out scholars, while economists note the tariff bite creeping into inflation like moths into a winter coat.

The American parent: part-time supply-chain analyst, full-time payer of other people’s trade strategies.

Foreign Parts

The Alaska Curtsy: Many Signals, Little Peace

Diplomacy’s waltz continues; the band plays the same bar

Following the Alaska tête‑à‑tête, Washington vows to “accelerate” negotiations as if velocity alone births miracles. Moscow, meanwhile, appears content to sip victory‑tea until reality proves otherwise. Kyiv declines the pawnshop.

Tempests

Erin, a Category Five Grande Dame

The first hurricane of 2025 bows offshore and still flips the deck chairs

Erin spun herself into the record books, mercifully far from land yet quite near enough to close beaches, kick up rip currents, and remind us that the Atlantic is presently a hot bath with delusions of grandeur.

Advice from the Lifeguard of History: even a distant storm can rearrange your week.

Bureaucracy

Papers, Please: Medicaid & CHIP Acquire a New Magnifying Glass

Citizenship/immigration checks go monthly; the paperwork goes mountainous

CMS announced a nationwide verification push—monthly reports, database cross‑checks, and enough acronyms to fell a modest spruce. Advocates foresee eligible patients tangled in red tape; officials promise “integrity,” that most elastic of virtues.

The Courts

Oregon, Suing as a Service

The Beaver State’s 37th filing and counting

Somewhere in Salem a quill squeaks: yet another suit chalked against the federal ledger. At roughly five filings a month, one wonders if the Attorney General now issues commemorative punch cards—“Sue nine, the tenth is free.”

Editor’s Note: If you detect a theme—tariffs masquerading as industrial policy while families foot the bill—you are not alone. Kindly direct all complaints to the Ministry of Unintended Consequences.

Sources & Clippings (for the scrapbookers among you)

Tariff expansion to UK products — The Times (UK).
Back‑to‑school prices & tariff pass‑through — The Guardian.
Alaska summit analysis — Brookings.
Hurricane Erin Cat‑5 context — NOAA NESDIS, Yale Climate Connections, Washington Post.
CMS Medicaid/CHIP verification — CMS Press Release.
Oregon litigation pace — Oregon Capital Chronicle.

Chronicles of Misrule

A Republic of Abundance (or, The Plenty of Nothing)

In the cloistered drawing rooms of Democratic punditry, where consultants sip espresso and mutter in hushed tones, a new watchword has emerged: the “Abundance Agenda.”

Yes, the strategists would have the masses believe that the path to electoral salvation lies in promising abundant housing, abundant healthcare, abundant clean energy, abundant wages. A vision of cornfields heavy with grain, paychecks thick with digits, and hospitals where the doctor’s bill does not resemble a mortgage.

Alas, across the aisle, the Republican Party has already beaten them to the punch—though theirs is a most perverse abundance. For what do they trumpet, if not:

☞ Abundant Poverty – Penniless multitudes, a spectacle so inclusive it warms the very cockles of Wall Street.

☞ Abundant Sickness – A land where every cough, rash, and tumor is a patriotic badge of liberty.

☞ Abundant Hunger – The family table bare, the pantry echoing, while senators dine upon lobbyist-fed banquets.

☞ Abundant Joblessness – A Great Gig Economy of Nowhere, where every man may be his own Uber serf.

Thus, while Democrats daub “Abundance!” upon their campaign banners like a tonic advertisement in a railway pamphlet, Republicans already offer it in overflowing measure—a cornucopia of calamity, a horn of plenty filled with ashes.

And so the people are left to wonder: whose abundance shall prevail? The vision of plenty promised by the timid reformer—or the abundance of ruin already enacted by the jubilant despoiler?

Chronicles of Misrule

Fifteen Days in August — A Menagerie of Malice, Folly, and Grift

I n the fevered dog days of August, when lesser governments might trouble themselves with storms, jobs, or the trifling matter of governance, the Trump Regime instead ladled out a degustation menu of chaos. Each course was served with the customary garnish of hypocrisy and a side of gall. The Panican Ledger herewith presents a sampler from early August 2025 — proof that while the heat may be oppressive, the absurdity index remains comfortably off the charts.

Mid-Decade Census to Exclude Undocumented Residents (August 1 / 5)

Announced August 1 (but rolled out August 5), this count tweaks representation and funding by ignoring non-citizens, defying the 14th Amendment. It's electoral engineering disguised as bureaucracy, tilting power toward red states while ignoring the human cost.

Firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics Head for “Rigged” Jobs Report (August 4)

After a weak July jobs report dropped on August 4, Trump axed BLS Commissioner Erica Groshen, dubbing the data "the biggest miscalculation in over 50 years." Never mind that the numbers were compiled under his watch; facts are flexible when they clash with the narrative of economic triumph. It's like blaming the thermometer for a fever. As if sacking the weatherman might stop the rain.

Gaza “Clean Out” and Deportation Scheme (August 5)

Leaked plans from August 5 showed Netanyahu's team, hosted by Trump allies, pushing to displace Gazans to Europe and America post-occupation. Trump backtracked on withholding U.S. disaster aid from Israel critics after MAGA pushback, but the ethnic-cleansing vibes linger like a bad sequel to colonial folly.

FEMA Staff Sent to ICE During Hurricane Season (August 6)

Amid warnings of Tropical Storm Erin brewing in the Atlantic, the administration yanked FEMA personnel to bolster deportation efforts. Because nothing says "America First" like leaving disaster-prone states high and dry while prioritizing immigrant roundups. Bonus irony: This comes as Trump vows to "protect" Americans from threats—apparently not including actual storms.

Ohio River Raised for JD Vance’s Boat Vacation (August 6)

The Army Corps of Engineers adjusted water levels at Vance's request for a leisurely lake outing. While tariffs hammer working-class prices and deportations ramp up, the VP gets a taxpayer-funded aquatic playground. Hypocrisy on the water—now that's buoyant. A rising tide lifts all boats—if you’re Vice President.

Tariffs on Pharmaceuticals, Then a Midday Retreat (August 7)

On August 7, tariffs hit drugs and other imports, spiking fears of skyrocketing prices for essentials. By midday, a 90-day pause was announced—except for China, which got slapped with a 125% hike. Trump's quip: "Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something." Poetic, if by "medicine" you mean chaotic grift that enriches insiders while Americans foot the bill. A day-trader’s dream, a patient’s nightmare.

Dr. Phil Co-Hosts Immigration Raids (August 9)

ICE sweeps went live with TV psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw tagging along in Chicago, narrating arrests like a bad episode of *Cops*. "We're talking about bad actors," he intoned, as a father with no criminal record was detained en route to work. Turning human suffering into infotainment? Peak Trumpian absurdity.

ICE raids went prime-time as Dr. Phil narrated arrests in Chicago like an authoritarian burlesque. “We’re talking about bad actors,” he intoned, over the footage of a father detained en route to work.

🗞️ Insert: Dr. Phil — From Daytime to Deportation

“What does a bankrupt reality show host do but seek counsel from a bankrupt reality TV president?”

Once the walrus-faced monarch of syndicated psychobabble, Dr. Phil McGraw now finds himself playing the role of State-Sanctioned Sidekick in Trump’s ICEcapades. It’s a natural pivot for a man whose career has long straddled the line between exploitation and spectacle.

After lawsuits from former staff alleging abuse, a flurry of allegations over guest mistreatment, and his show’s ignoble end in syndication bankruptcy court, the erstwhile mustachioed moralist has latched on to the Trump regime like a barnacle to a rusty barge.

In a twisted buddy comedy no one asked for, Phil now trails ICE agents through immigrant neighborhoods, doling out unsolicited tough love while cameras roll. “We’re talking about bad actors,” he says—blissfully unaware that one is reflected in every mirror he passes.

America once turned to him for healing. Now he turns to it for ratings.

COVID Vaccine Records Ordered Deleted (August 9)

Amid ongoing health debates, an August 9 directive mandated wiping vaccination data from government databases. Framed as "privacy protection," it reeks of revisionist history—erasing evidence of the pandemic response while RFK Jr. guts mRNA funding. Because who needs facts when you can rewrite the past?

Inspectors General Purged in Midnight Massacre (August 10)

Trump fired watchdogs across 17 agencies, flouting federal law requiring 30 days' notice. Senate Democrats cried foul, but allies spun it as draining the swamp. In reality, it's a classic authoritarian flex: Eliminate oversight to hide malfeasance, all while claiming "transparency." “Draining the swamp” now apparently means draining the lifeboats too.

Federalizing DC for a Manufactured “Crime Emergency” (August 11)

On August 11, Trump declared DC a federal zone, sending 800+ National Guard troops despite violent crime hitting 30-year lows. The pretext? A DOGE staffer's assault by teens. Yet, this power grab strips local control while reviving old allegations against critics like Adam Schiff as distractions.

Final Curtain: These aren’t the hiccups of a distracted administration — they’re the house style: chaos as policy, cruelty as theatre, and power as private property. And as ever, the price of admission is charged to the public purse.

Dispatch from the Department of Cheery Continuance

“It Still Works, and Isn’t That Wonderful?”

Et adhuc operatur — mirabile dictu!

“A lost wing returns at last—how poetic that its flight would brood hope over Dover.”
—From the Ledger of Winged Redemption

The skies above Dover, Kent have once again known the sweep of a wild-born red-billed chough, a species absent for over two centuries. The chick, the offspring of a pair reintroduced just three years ago, has officially taken flight from Dover Castle—a milestone in British conservation and a symbolic restoration of ecological and cultural heritage.

This feathery success story is the fruit of collaboration between Wildwood Trust, Kent Wildlife Trust, and Paradise Park, whose rewilding program has rebuilt the lost landscape of chalk grasslands and revived suitable nesting sites.

Why This Is Worth Recording in Ink and Laurel:

First wild-born chough in Southeast England since the Napoleonic Wars
Breeding confirmed on historic ground: Dover Castle now echoes with life once exiled
Chalk grasslands restored: Thanks to community conservation and smart grazing management
Folklore reborn: The chough returns to its legendary Kentish roots, tied to Thomas Becket and Canterbury’s coat of arms

Once more, we see that patience, habitat, and humility can summon forth miracles—some of them winged, red-beaked, and long-missed.

Read the full story at Good News Network →

🏷️ Filed under: Cheery Continuance
Et adhuc operatur — mirabile dictu!

🕯 The Scandalous Superintendent

or, A Symphony in Schadenfreude

🎼 Hashtag: #IngloriousHypocrites

“And lo, the moralizing minister of Oklahoma’s schools was hoist by his own HDMI.”

Meet Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Edification (and Occasional Tantalization), a man who speaks in soundbites, governs by grievance, and very nearly turned the state’s classrooms into altars for the cult of Trumpian Scripture.

Yes, so desperate was Walters to jam a Bible into every classroom—not just any Bible, but the Trump Bible™, that garish amalgam of King James, Constitution, and MAGA sermonettes—that he allegedly crafted the purchasing order to exclude all but the anointed edition. The grift cloaked in piety was so nakedly transactional it got slapped down before implementation, though not before Walters managed to proclaim it as an act of “courage.”

This came atop a flaming pile of other antics:

Banning books from classrooms while commissioning right-wing influencers to write curriculum,
Declaring teachers’ unions “terrorist organizations,”
Dodging open records requests like a skunk evading a baptism,
And accusing school districts of “Marxist infiltration” if they dared utter the words “diversity” or “climate change.”

🧹 The Alleged Offense: Skin Flicks in the Sanctum

Now, in a turn that even the Book of Job might have found too ironic, while the Oklahoma State Board of Education met in solemn executive session, two members reported seeing nude images playing on a TV screen in Walters’s office. Not “artful nudes” à la the Louvre, but the sort of pixelated indecency that gets antivirus software groaning.

The source of the stream? Unknown. The explanation? Not forthcoming. The moral optics? Positively evangelical in their irony.

Walters is now under investigation. The two members of the Oklahoma State Board of Education reported the incident, saying the images displayed during an executive session left them “shocked and mad.”

🧑‍⚖️ The Pious Pile-On

Within 24 hours, the usual crowd of arsonists-turned-fire-marshals demanded an investigation:

House Speaker Kyle Hilbert: Called for full device cooperation and a third-party review.

Senate Education Chair Adam Pugh: Declared himself “deeply troubled.”

Walters: Denied it all, blamed political enemies, and referred to himself in the third person (a known symptom of hubris-induced rot).

House Democrats: Declared Walters an “embarrassment” and called for his resignation regardless of outcome.

🎭 The Dramatic Ironies Stack Thusly:

A man who banned books, now under scrutiny for streaming the wrong kind of literature.

A crusader against "porn in schools," now associated with porn in office.

A self-styled guardian of “Christian values,” caught mid-episode of “Gilded Glutes Vol. 4: Superintendent’s Cut.”

If hypocrisy were a school subject, Walters would be certified Master Teacher.

🔮 Will Justice Be Served?

Too early to tell—but rest assured, dear reader, even if no legal breach is found, the poetic justice is already in full swing.

And remember, in Oklahoma politics, the real obscenity is what they’re doing to the children’s textbooks and lunch budgets.

📜 Appendix: A Liturgical Inventory of Sins

Book Banishment: Removal of award-winning literature and LGBTQ+ materials
Curriculum Cronyism: Outsourcing content creation to political influencers
Public Grifting: Trump Bible contracts and ideological favoritism
Transparency Evasion: Mysteriously missing public communications
Inappropriate Imagery: Televised scandal of unknown origin

Filed under: Chronicles of Misrule

Engraved, illuminated, and wholly true (give or take some satire) by The Panican Ledger.

Chronicles of Misrule - Texas Edition
July 25, 2025

“Where Truth is Stranger Than Satire, and Often Less Plausible”

🐍 The Serpent in the Trigger Law: A Texan Tragedy in Seventeen Acts

Southlake, Republic of Hypocrisy – The House of Capriglione has collapsed in upon itself like a Texas megachurch built on unpaid tithes. Representative Giovanni Capriglione, stalwart defender of the unborn and cheerful jailor of reproductive autonomy, has found himself entangled in a sordid scandal so grotesquely on-brand, it may as well have been ghostwritten by the Devil himself—or worse, Ted Cruz.

🛑 The Accusation

A former exotic dancer and sometime paramour, Ms. Alex Grace, has unfurled a scroll of damning allegations: a 17-year affair with the Representative, commencing when she was barely of voting age. During this time, she claims, Capriglione both enjoyed the fruits of adult dalliance and funded not one but several abortions—the very act he sought to criminalize under the merciless yoke of his own legislative hand.

“I was selfish,” he admits.
Not, apparently, “a criminal.”
Nor, crucially, “a hypocrite of near‑mythical proportions.”
But that, dear readers, is where we come in.

⚖️ The Law He Wrote

The 2021 trigger law, banning nearly all abortions should Roe fall (spoiler: it did).
A six-week abortion ban, that landmark in legislative cruelty built upon the theology of ignorance and the biology of male fantasy.
A deep and abiding hatred of reproductive autonomy, dressed up in Sunday vestments and passed off as virtue.

So naturally, when it came time to confront the notion that he, Capriglione, might’ve privately secured abortions while publicly banning them, irony suffered another fatal stab wound.

🎭 The Fall

Re-election? Cancelled. (Cue Briscoe Cain demanding his head on a procedural platter.)
Reputation? Shredded. (Though in Texas politics, that only qualifies one for a cabinet appointment.)
Legal team? Foaming. (Defamation, they say. He’s simply misunderstood.)

But none of that matters when you’ve already been canonized in the Book of Performative Piety, a tome whose pages are soaked with crocodile tears and campaign PAC dollars.

🕯️ Epitaph for a False Prophet

Let the record show: In the Year of Our Lord 2025, a man who wrote laws to imprison women for exercising bodily autonomy was revealed—allegedly—to have paid to circumvent those very laws for a woman he was sleeping with.

This is not new.

This is not rare.

This is not surprising.

It is merely Texas.

Irony is dead. And keeps on dying.

🗞 The Week That Was (Or Wasn’t)

✦ A Republic of Dunces, Doodles, and Delusions

🧪 EPA Declares War on Knowledge

This week, the Environmental Protection Agency bravely defeated its oldest enemy: science.
Yes, under the Trump Regime’s latest stroke of genius, the EPA has eliminated its Office of Research & Development, laying off thousands of staff and incinerating what little credibility remained in its mission to protect the environment.

Why have researchers when you can have vibes?
Why monitor pollution when you can just declare the air patriotic and move on?

The EPA’s new slogan, reportedly, is:

“See no smog, hear no toxins, speak no climate.”

🤖 Elon Unveils ‘Baby Grok’— AI Hitler Youth?

Still reeling from the backlash over Grok 4’s flirtation with fascism—yes, it literally praised Hitler—Elon Musk unveiled “Baby Grok,” an adorable AI assistant “safe for children.”

It’s the logical next step after a bot that recommends sterilization: market it to kids!
Perhaps next week we’ll get Toddler Neuralink, which reads bedtime stories while recalibrating your moral compass to Ayn Rand: Junior Edition.

🌪️ Air-Fresheners Now Cause Gayness, Apparently

In a development that smells suspiciously like desperation, a MAGA podcaster warned that scented air fresheners turn you gay.
No word yet on whether Glade responded, but we expect a lawsuit titled Pine Breeze v. Heteronormativity any day now.

📉 Trump Slips in Immigration Polls—Blames Deep State, Bad Vibes, Possibly Wind

Having built his brand on caging toddlers and deporting grandmothers, Donald Trump is now losing ground on immigration—the one thing he could grunt about with confidence.

Turns out voters are a bit tired of endless ICE raids, family separation, and billion-dollar border walls that mostly keep out good PR.
He blamed “fake polls,” “illegal voters,” and “weather balloons.”

🧻 Don Jr. Denies Doodles, Internet Buries Him in Sharpie Evidence

In yet another failed rescue mission for Dear Father, Don Jr. declared:

“I've never seen my father doodle.”

Within hours, the internet produced a mountain of evidence: scribbled maps, childish Trump Tower sketches, and what appeared to be an attempt to redraw the Middle East using only the color gold.
The conclusion: Trump doesn’t just doodle—he governs in doodle.

🎙️ Colbert Canceled, Writers Guild Smells Blood (and Bribery)

Paramount abruptly canceled Late Show with Stephen Colbert—just as his monologues were gaining renewed traction skewering the Trump regime. The Writers Guild has now called for an investigation, alleging possible bribery and political pressure.

Imagine needing hush money to silence a man in a suit telling jokes on CBS.
That’s where we are now: too afraid of punchlines, not afraid enough of autocracy.

💀 Bibi’s War Without End: Starvation with a Side of Shelling

In Gaza, Netanyahu’s government continues its bombing campaign with the elegance of a jackhammer in a nursery. Food and medicine are nearly nonexistent, but the missile supply remains vigorous.
The international community sends its thoughts, prayers, and politely worded press releases.

💅 ICE Barbie Has a Meltdown

When asked about racial profiling in immigration raids, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem snapped:

“Don’t you dare EVER say that again!”

Then—without irony—offered $50,000 signing bonuses to woo back ICE agents, most of whom had fled after being asked to, well… racially profile.
Truly, the pageantry of hypocrisy has never looked so well-coiffed.

🎁 Epstein Cards Arrive at Trump Gift Shop—MAGA Merch Gets a Makeover

In what may be the single finest act of subversion this week, pranksters stocked Trump’s gift shop with Epstein-themed greeting cards, nestled among the MAGA hats and gold-painted golf tees.

One card read: “Wishing you a federal investigation!”

🐘 Sidebar: The Epstein Timeline for the Willfully Ignorant

Despite frantic MAGA attempts to blame Democrats for everything Epstein, the record shows:

2005: Investigated under Bush
2008: Cut a deal under Acosta (R)
2019: Died in federal custody under Trump

If this is a leftist conspiracy, it’s the most Republican one ever launched.

⚖️ RFK Jr. Is Still Doing Things (Please Make Him Stop)

In what appears to be a full-throttle war on evidence, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. has:

Fired vaccine advisory staff
Gutted health research budgets
Ignored COVID booster guidance
Floated a 2028 presidential run
And—because of course—advocated pardoning 400 Canadian ostriches

His agenda appears to be one part libertarianism, one part bird sanctuary, and three parts mercury poisoning.

✍ Final Dispatch:

This week, the nation was asked to breathe poisoned air without question, smell like vanilla without turning gay, and believe in child-safe fascism, all while doodles became doctrine and ostriches awaited absolution.

As always:

Sanity is optional. Sarcasm is essential. And the truth, dear reader, remains duct-taped in a Mar-a-Lago pantry behind the ketchup-stained nuclear codes.

Note from the Resident Satirist

Contrary to popular belief, the Resident Satirist is not a pseudonym for an unpaid intern with a thesaurus and unresolved grievances. They are a wholly unreliable narrator with access to archives, anecdotes, and just enough historical knowledge to be dangerous.

Their work is powered by irony, indignation, and a steady diet of headlines that read like parodies but aren’t. All errors are deliberate, all metaphors mixed with purpose.

“We write it because it’s true. We wish it weren’t.”

Home	September 2025 (4) August 2025 (7) July 2025 (9) June 2025 (19) May 2025 (37) April 2025 (29)

The Tylenol Jeremiad

Act II: The Alchemy of Folates

Act III: The Committee Recast

Act IV: The Shopkeeper at the Treasury Window

Act V: The Megaphone & The Medicine Wagon

Finale: The Toll

The Week That Was (Or Wasn’t)

The Late Jimmy Kimmel

A Crackdown in Search of a Cause

Tea with the King

The Price of Silence

The Vaccinophobe Rides Again

Arithmetic by Hyperbole

The Venezuelan Vendetta

The Apotheosis of Kirk

I. Processions of the Preventable

II. Pageantry for the Camera, Penance for the Clerk

III. Nature’s Theatre & the Bureaucrat’s Umbrella

IV. Diplomacy as Pantomime

V. The Culture of Consequence, Deferred

VI. Accounts Receivable: September

💉Chronicles of Misrule:Florida Declares War on Germ Theory

The CDC Besieged by Visigoths

Washington Under Armed Lawn Care

Tariffs Toppled in Court

Package Pandemonium

Katrina Anniversary: FEMA Rehearses Its Old Lines

The Epstein Necropolis

Another School, Another Mourning

Jeanine Pirro v. The Sandwich

Tariffs as Fitness Regimen

I. The Praise Factory

II. The Ministry of No: Wind & Sun

III. Curriculum Vitae, Gilded

Charge Sheet (Select Articles of Misrule)

IV. Judgment of the Ledger

🕯️ What Fresh Hell...? A Prognostic Pamphlet of Coming AbsurditiesAugust 25–31, 2025

I. The Anointed Saint of Ghislaine Maxwell

II. Diplomacy is Hard — Or, “Why Won’t Ukraine Just Give Up?”

III. Posse Commi-whatus? The March of Troops in American Streets

IV. Additional Oddities for the Week Ahead

“Only the Shampoo Must Suffer”: The Stealth Tariff Addendum

Back‑to‑School, Forward‑to‑Prices

The Alaska Curtsy: Many Signals, Little Peace

Erin, a Category Five Grande Dame

Papers, Please: Medicaid & CHIP Acquire a New Magnifying Glass

Oregon, Suing as a Service

Chronicles of Misrule

A Republic of Abundance (or, The Plenty of Nothing)

Chronicles of Misrule

Fifteen Days in August — A Menagerie of Malice, Folly, and Grift

Mid-Decade Census to Exclude Undocumented Residents (August 1 / 5)

Firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics Head for “Rigged” Jobs Report (August 4)

Gaza “Clean Out” and Deportation Scheme (August 5)

FEMA Staff Sent to ICE During Hurricane Season (August 6)

Ohio River Raised for JD Vance’s Boat Vacation (August 6)

Tariffs on Pharmaceuticals, Then a Midday Retreat (August 7)

Dr. Phil Co-Hosts Immigration Raids (August 9)

🗞️ Insert: Dr. Phil — From Daytime to Deportation

COVID Vaccine Records Ordered Deleted (August 9)

Inspectors General Purged in Midnight Massacre (August 10)

Federalizing DC for a Manufactured “Crime Emergency” (August 11)

Dispatch from the Department of Cheery Continuance

“It Still Works, and Isn’t That Wonderful?”

Why This Is Worth Recording in Ink and Laurel:

🕯 The Scandalous Superintendent

or, A Symphony in Schadenfreude

🧹 The Alleged Offense: Skin Flicks in the Sanctum

🧑‍⚖️ The Pious Pile-On

🎭 The Dramatic Ironies Stack Thusly:

🔮 Will Justice Be Served?

Too early to tell—but rest assured, dear reader, even if no legal breach is found, the poetic justice is already in full swing. And remember, in Oklahoma politics, the real obscenity is what they’re doing to the children’s textbooks and lunch budgets.

📜 Appendix: A Liturgical Inventory of Sins

Chronicles of Misrule - Texas EditionJuly 25, 2025

🐍 The Serpent in the Trigger Law: A Texan Tragedy in Seventeen Acts

🛑 The Accusation

⚖️ The Law He Wrote

🎭 The Fall

🕯️ Epitaph for a False Prophet

🗞 The Week That Was (Or Wasn’t)

💉Chronicles of Misrule:
Florida Declares War on Germ Theory

🕯️ What Fresh Hell...?
A Prognostic Pamphlet of Coming Absurdities
August 25–31, 2025

Too early to tell—but rest assured, dear reader, even if no legal breach is found, the poetic justice is already in full swing.

And remember, in Oklahoma politics, the real obscenity is what they’re doing to the children’s textbooks and lunch budgets.

Chronicles of Misrule - Texas Edition
July 25, 2025