Dear 2025, don’t let the door hit you on your ass on the way out. You will be remembered as the year the culture wars came home to roost. While trickle-down economics is demonstrably fake news, trickle-down intolerance is real, leading to trickle-down fear and uncertainty. The fish rots from the head down, and there’s something rotten in the District of Columbia!
Back in January, outgoing 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson articulated the fear and uncertainty that has accompanied tRump’s second term: “What’s ahead of us is uncertain. We face unprecedented times … challenging. To me, I want to maintain an optimism—a positive outlook. The situation at the federal level is going to be … unsettled. That’s the most polite word that I can summon to describe it, and there’s going to be ripple effects into the state.”
Rumors began circulating on Facebook in January when Central Coast Chisme members began discussing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Bakersfield coming here. Granted, it wasn’t until July 10 when ICE raids hit closer to home as Glass House Farms in Camarillo and Carpinteria were targeted. National Guard troops, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers, and Customs and Border Patrol officers showed up and arrested more than 360 people.
We got our first taste of DOGE when the so-called Department of Government Efficiency started chopping theU.S. Forest Service, which led to nonprofit Los Padres Forest Association (LPFA) twiddling its thumbs waiting for the gutted Forest Service to allow it to continue its work assisting trail improvement and wilderness preservation. Dumb.
In April, we learned that unrepentant former SLO County supervisor candidate Michelle Marie Morrow was going to jail for 90 days followed by two years of felony probation. Why? The write-in candidate who tried to capture Dawn Ortiz-Legg’s 3rd District seat turned out to have lied about her address when filing her candidacy and voting. In other words, the registered Republican who was endorsed by the Republican Party of San Luis Obispo committed election fraud and perjury. The political party that’s constantly screaming about election fraud without a shred of evidence endorsed a candidate that committed election fraud.
Thanks to tRump’s claims of antisemitism on U.S. college campuses, Cal Poly’s own President Jeffrey Armstrong had to testify before Congress on May 7 because, according to the Committee on Education and Workforce, the university failed to address “antisemitic, violent protests” on campus. Man, free speech can be a real bitch, amirite? And this was after Cal Poly hid its DEI office in the University Personnel division following Trump’s anti-DEI executive order.
Lucia Mar Unified School District has become the local ground zero for the debate over transgender athletes, with hundreds of people showing up at the district’s May 6 meeting to make their voices heard, all over one female track athlete who complained about her transgender teammate.
The transgender athlete spoke anonymously: “The danger doesn’t just come from other students,” she said. “Individuals like Shannon Kessler, Gaea Powell, and Mike Fuller are using their platforms to spread harmful misinformation and hateful rhetoric. They’re even involved members of the track team, handing them scripts designed to dehumanize and intimidate queer youth.”
Powell is the transphobic failed Arroyo Grande mayoral candidate who basically showed porn during public comment at a SLO County Board of Supervisors meeting in 2024 and is currently on trial for election fraud. Fuller got elected to the school board last year. He tried to recall Lucia Mar school board members over their masking decisions during COVID-19. And Kessler? She’s devoted to praying and Republicans and very proud of her 15-minutes-of-fame with radio host Dave Congalton talking about the issue.
She’s also running for Assembly.
“I’m definitely not a hater,” she said in a Facebook Reel.
There was also the complaint that alleged a transgender student used the Atascadero High School girl’s locker room in the 2023-24 school year and “twerked in the faces” of other girls. Because she was named in the 2024 complaint, Atascadero Unified School District Board Member Rebekah Koznek was invited to The White House to witness tRump signing an executive order banning trans athletes from competition and removing Biden’s Title IX expansion.
We got some additional national level political theater on June 12 when our U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal took his five minutes of grilling Pete Hegseth as an opportunity to belittle and berate him, calling the now-named Secretary of War an “embarrassment to the United States.” Sounds right.
We made the news again when U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla showed up to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference in LA about ICE to ask some questions. As he walked toward Noem, the Secret Service grabbed him, dragged him out, and pushed him to the ground. This is tRump’s America, and he’s got his own Schutzstaffel.
Speaking of tRump, his biggest local cheerleader seems to be SLO County District Attorney Dan Dow, whose comments in reposts connecting the election of Muslim Zohran Mamdani as NYC Mayor to the 9/11 terrorist attacks were deemed racist by the California Public Defenders Association. Cal Poly’s chapter of the Turning Point USA club invited Dow to speak at their Sept. 29 vigil for assassinated rightwing activist Charlie Kirk. I wonder if an unbiased district attorney would better serve SLO County?
What will 2026 hold? Only time will tell, but let’s hope it’s better than 2025. ∆
The Shredder is full of partisan bullshit. Send special requests to shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in 2025 Year in Review.
So The Shredder ends 2025 engaging and falling for identity politics, lionizing Democrats and beating Republicans. Let’s turn the tables:
1. N.J. Democrat, Bob MENENDEZ, sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2025.
2. Former Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate and current Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, now embroiled in and, as governor, responsible for 9 billion dollars in fraudulent public spending spending on sham “daycare centers” run by Somali immigrants.
3. Gavin Newsom continues to and endorses handing commercial drivers licenses to foreign nationals who may or may not even be able to read street signs in English, causing deadly and regular car crashes and stealing trucking jobs from real Americans.
4. Democrats continue to take pot shots at and smear president Trump for attempting to end the sham “war” in Ukraine. A war that has claimed the lives of up to 2 million Ukrainian soldiers and started by Democrat intrigues, Victoria Neuland, Joe Biden, and RINOs like Lindsey Graham.
It would be easy to continue the list of Democrat party failures, but why, our economy is on the verge of collapse. What matters now is not pointing fingers, but getting us out of the ditch and making damn sure Americans have jobs, don’t go hungry, don’t find themselves living in the streets, and that the dollar maintains what little strength is left in it. This can only be done by radical changes involve taxing the rich, balancing our federal and state budgets, slashing defense spending at least 60%, restarting a public works program and an FDR style Corp of public employees, SCOTUS needs to rule against or Congress needs to repeal Citizens United, close 80% of overseas military bases, a rent freeze, raising the minimum wage to $40 an hour, and withdrawing from NATO as soon as possible.
America is now trapped in a debt spiral, the dollar lost roughly 10% of its value last year and if it continues, we could see 20% of its purchasing power lost by the end of 2026, foreign central banks are dumping Treasuries and buying gold instead, the Fed is injecting 10 of billions of dollars in “liquidity” into banks and continuing the dollar’s collapse, we are deindustrialized with crumbling infrastructure, and our economy is now similar to Argentina’s. People are getting rid of their dollars the minute they get them. I’m buying and storing anything I can that is a real asset whenever I have a spare dollar: gallons of alcohol and flats of instant coffee. I’d buy tobacco but no one smokes anymore. These commodities will 4x or 5x easily.
Americans need to get ready for collapse, it happens in 2026.
I am delighted to see that the left is continuing to push some of the wackier components of the transgender agenda. While voter’s eyes may glaze over while trying to understand tariffs, tax policy, economic policy and such, there is nothing like visualizing a 6’2”, 220 lb man playing women’s soccer, or an anatomic male strutting into the girl’s showers, to make the voters wonder “Just what the hell are these Democrats thinking?”
If you want to win elections, come back to planet Earth.
John D:
Exactly. If the Dems hope to retake the House, the only words coming out of their conniving lips should be, “jobs, jobs, jobs.”
After Japan, Russia, and China dump their treasuries, and no one else will buy the ones Scott Bessent hopes to peddle, these treasuries are going to cone home and cause hyper inflation. The global south now has a powerful alternative, the digital yuan, based on one gram of gold per yuan. Further, the global south no longer needs the SWIFT interbank settlement system, they can use the mBRIDGE system. Western European economies are collapsing almost as fast as us. 2026 is going to be a nightmare, the dollar will completely collapse. I’m buying as many things I can to sell later while I still can. A 1.75 jug if booze for $20.00 will seem like a steal a year from now. Further, there are no jobs. Anything out there pays low wages with no benefits. It’s over folks. Prepare NOW.
A tip for coping: It is pretty easy to brew your own beer, or to ferment wine from sugar sources like fruit. There are plenty of sources of fruit, such as the apple orchards along Hwy 101 near the San Luis exit. For those wanting a little more punch and willing to accept the risk of blinding or death if done incorrectly, there is the distillation of your beer or wine into spirits. There is no reason to face the apocalypse sober.
mBRIDGE is replacing SWIFT and already doing tens of billions of dollars worth of transactions. Saudi Arabia has also ended the petrodollar. We are TOAST:
mBridge, also known as Multiple CBDC Bridge, is a blockchain-based platform that facilitates cross-border payments and foreign exchange transactions in real-time. It uses wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs) to reduce the cost and time of traditional cross-border transactions.
My late grandmother told me of her youth in the Bronx. She said her father had a still in his bathtub and when the local police would raid their apartment, they’d simply take a wrench and carefully disconnect a valve so it could be rebuilt later and they could continue buying their own alcohol from him. He would tell my grandmother’s mother to “call Tammany Hall” so they could bail him out of jail. She would deliver the booze in a baby carriage.
My point is this, the dollar is on the verge of collapse. The Fed is discreetly doing QE (again) to quell the spikes in the overnight repo market. Banks don’t trust banks enough to provide short term lending. Regional banks hold roughly 70 percent of CRE. All those low interest loans obtained in in 2020 have to be rolled over at 7 and 8 percent interest in 2026 for commercial buildings now worth 10 percent of what they originally sold for because the buildings are no longer being occupied. The owners will simply turn the keys in and regional banks will go under. Look at what happened to Silicon Valley (regional) Bank a few years ago. It collapsed due to bond issues and the Fed had to ride to the rescue and bail it’s depositors out. Further, the FDIC is extremely undercapitalized when the 2026 collapse happens. It’s all going under and, as a member of the working poor, I’m buying 1.75 liter jugs of hard alcohol for $20.00 when it’s on sale to put in storage. These jugs could easily 4x or 5x when the inflation hits. $20.00 will seem like a bargain.
Well, I thought this website had gone haywire because of the Web Upload Insertion Order thing at the top of this page, but, no, it’s the same old site with the “self satisfying” comments of Mr. Fly and Mr. Donegan, who are long in comment and short on wisdom.
I applaud the Shredder for keeping things real and seeing the truth.
And into the “self-satisfying” fray jumps Mr. Smith, to smuggly denigrate our fun, while engaging in it himself with comments which are long on grumpiness, and short on insight.
Oh dear, here comes Michael, mincing onto these pages.
Yep Mr. Fly, 90 in April and still can catch more fish than you.
Is that a challenge, sir? I just set one of my fishing poles last night, gonna try bobber fishing on the reef.