I have a correction to make. I wrote that Mr. Pretti was murdered by ICEholes. That is incorrect. Mr. Pretti was murdered by Border Patrol ASSholes. MyBaconPress regrets the error – and the assholes! But this is interesting. This could be related. Greg “Shorty” Bovino is out as Border Patrol “Commander at Large,” with “large” being a particularly ironic title, like when you call your overweight friend “Tiny.” Bovino is being relegated back to a local player in El Centro.

Bovino took the line the Border Patrol agents were the victims in the Pretti shooting, not Alex Pretti. I mean, obvs. A mob of Border Patrol idiots subdued and disarmed an innocent man, then murdered him where he was. We all saw it. How could the murdered guy possibly be the victim? No, that would be the agents who did the murdering. (Hey, shouldn’t we deport them now, violent criminals that they are?)

The White House is walking back some of the earliest claims about Pretti. There’s just too much video. There are too many angles. At least with the Renee Good murder, there was one angle they could pretend was her hitting him with her vehicle – and they DID make contact as a direct result of his bad police work. She was trying to steer around him. But because of the that look, they had a story they could cling to.

There are no stories in the Pretti murder. This was a good guy, an upright American citizen, a VA ICU nurse who was just trying to help people. Alex Pretti was an innocent man…

UPDATE: New video has surfaced of Pretti clashing with agents eleven days before he was murdered. Apparently, during the confrontation, Pretti kicked the taillight of an ICE vehicle. The taillight appears to have fallen out of it’s position. I’m still trying to figure out how that happened. Those lights are pretty well secured, normally. One would not imagine a single kick could knock it loose. Maybe break the lens, sure, but to have the entire assembly fall out? Weird. Anyway, an agent attacks Pretti. They struggle a bit. Pretti gets away, but he doesn’t leave.

That’s why we get to see that he appears to be armed in this video, too. Like the day he died, he never once touched the weapon, even as agents were roughing him up. I presume the right will be told that’s the “proof” he was violent. I see it as proof that he had great restraint. He never touched his gun. But it does pose a new question: was Pretti’s murder predicated on an encounter eleven days before? Was it retribution? I STILL don’t see one thing that might justify the shooting of Alex Pretti…

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That kind of thing leads directly to this kind of thing: the Doomsday Clock, which, since 1947 has metaphorically represented the risk that humans will succumb to human-made threats, with midnight representing Armageddon, has been moved up to 85 seconds. That’s the closest it has ever been in it’s history. That’s the end of humanity, closer than ever. Thanks, MAGA. You did that!

The clock is moved based on the opinions and expertise of the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The Bulletin members ask themselves two questions: is humanity safer than last year, and is humanity safer than it has been over the last 78 years from human-made threats? Based on their answers, the clock moves one way or the other.

They don’t just move it, of course. They explain their decision. They said, “Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers,” the Bulletin wrote in their statement.

That feels like a direct commentary on Donny, doesn’t it? I mean, Putin, too, what with his war of choice against Ukraine but Donny has done more worldwide damage than Putin in the last year so mostly Donny. They seem to have indicated Xi, too, but he seems content just to sit back, let the US blow it’s own brains out, then clean up the mess and claim the spoils.

Anyway, the Bulletin continues, “Far too many leaders have grown complacent and indifferent, in many cases adopting rhetoric and policies that accelerate rather than mitigate these existential risks. Because of this failure of leadership, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today sets the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe.”

The clock originally started at seven minutes to midnight. It has been as far away as 17 minutes to midnight. Now? 85 seconds. Propaganda has increased conservative radicalism across the US and Europe. Cons have made gains and, in some places, have real power. They’re living their conservative dreams and as the conservative vision takes hold, experts agree: the world is a more dangerous place than it has ever been in history…

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We can fight the ‘Culture War’ all we want to – and if you’re like me, you really don’t want to. The so-called ‘Culture War’ is all about oppressing ideas some people don’t like. It’s the embodiment of taking away liberties. It’s all about keeping other people from doing things that have no effect on you. But do you know what does have an effect on you? The strength of the US dollar. When the strength of the US dollar drops, your buying power drops. That is, it takes more money to buy the same things. Wheelbarrow full of cash for a loaf of bread, anyone?

Since Donny stole his way back into power, the US dollar has dropped 10%. It’s the lowest it’s been since the US was trying to dig out of the economic hole created by Covid-19, only this time, there’s no disaster to point to. Well, no disaster beyond trump. Apparently, he’s all the disaster the world needs.

After falling at record rates for a couple of days, someone asked the Felon if he was concerned. “No, I think it’s great,” Trump said of the weaker dollar, during a visit to Iowa to promote his record on the economy. Asked whether he was concerned about the currency’s slide, he told reporters: “I think the value of the dollar – look at the business we’re doing. The dollar’s doing great.”

There’s the tell. A weaker dollar can be good for great big, multinational corporations. It’s terrible for you. Donny thinks it’s in great shape because he cares about great big, multinational corporations and he doesn’t give two figs about you…