Will what we want to happen, happen?

Likely not, because we’re entirely too splintered, angry, fed up with each other, as well as national politics in general, and simply hungry for something that approaches normalcy.

And there was such a time.

But you’d have to take a ride back with me some forty-six years ago, and that’s a bit of a hike down memory lane. I was a Republican back then, and voted for the Great Communicator. Matter of fact, I voted for him twice before I realized I was listening to a ventriloquist, and Reagan was simply mouthing scripted lines, written for him by the Republican Party, as an actor learns to do.

But he was smooth and I was a half-century younger in those days.

To make a long story short, the decades between the end of World War Two and Ronnie were golden years for America, the best description of the ‘normalcy’ we all hunger for…and are told we can never return to. We had no debt, the millionaires gladly paid their taxes, and our industrial strength was such as the world had never seen. Immigrants all, we Americans welcomed anyone who came to us.

Doesn’t seem to matter that the dudes who tell us we can never go back are the same as those who got us where we are.

But I’m not here to beat that horse, it’s tired enough. What we have is a plutocracy of billionaires, telling us how lucky we are to have Johnny Carson re-runs and a job. There’s always Wal-Mart, Netflix and Amazon to keep us in bread and circuses, while they run off with 90% of the available cash.

Getting back to the Mid-Terms, I’ve seen too many re-runs of the movie where Donald Trump can’t possibly win, and then somehow does.

I’ve long argued that our president is not the cause of our present circumstances, but the result of a two-party system where you can’t tell the one from the other. If the electorate can’t hook up that half-century of cause and effect, they have precious little chance to willingly vote us down a different path.

If you think the president’s MAGA supporters are the dumb, the ill-informed and the ignorant, you simply haven’t been around long enough to see the entire movie. They’re angry and frightened, with plenty of reason. For the most part solidly middle class, they watched their security, and that of their children and grandchildren disappear, along with closed steel-mills, corporate farms, boarded up main streets, undelivered pensions and soaring costs of living.

No Democrats, other than Bernie Sanders and AOC, have addressed that. Not now, and not for the past fifty years.

If you were among them, who would you vote for?

When you depend upon the angry and frightened to vote for a party that abandoned them a half-century ago, you’re three cards short of a straight flush in a five-card poker game.

We’re one day away from finding out.

No matter which side you’re on, please don’t stay home.

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Crimes are committed, serious crimes that have jail-terms hanging off them, and yet no one goes to the pokey, and no admissions of guilt are made, because the bad guys are worth billions and ‘settle out of court.’

Just one more instance of the disparity between those who got and those who don’t got. Here’s a little trip down Memory Lane.

• Even though it’s three years back, one of the hot topics of the moment is Jeffery Epstein, and it seems J.P. Morgan Chase Bank had their thumb on the scales of justice when they ponied up $365 million to settle a couple of cases charging their financial support of his so-called ‘enterprises.’ One can only wonder if the settlement outweighed the support, but Epstein was mainly a financial guy.

• Wells Fargo Bank, an outfit that keeps showing up on the shady-deals list, got caught opening millions of fake accounts to pump up their balance sheet. That cost ‘em three-thousand-million-dollars, but there’s a silver lining…some executives got ‘personal sanctions’ out of the debacle.

• Purdue Pharma (and my favorite criminals, the Sackler family) got an $8 billion haircut for killing a couple hundred thousand addicts to their opioids. No accident that, they promoted the stuff. Separately, the Sacklers settled civil suits without (you guessed it) admitting either guilt or liability. Did it affect their social standing? Probably not.

Which gets to the core of the argument.

What does the law really mean, when ‘if you got the dough, you get to go?’

A friend of mine was falsely accused of child abuse in an ugly divorce, and lost his ability to visit his children, the only thing of importance to him. His in-laws were too rich for him to fight, which is the other side of ‘if you got the dough, you get to go.’

Money rips the blindfold off Lady Justice.

Then, of course, there’s the lawyerly side of getting justice, which is seldom discussed and merely another word for leverage.

In the ancient days of my business career, I had reason to bring lawsuits against those who had done me wrong. I won them all, even getting a lawyer disbarred in the process. In every case, when my legal fees were paid, I ended up with pocket-change. The lesson I learned was to “leave the courtrooms to others,” and you can guess who I mean by ‘others.’

“We are a nation of laws, not men,” goes the saying.

There was a time when that was true.

The evidence at hand suggests those times are over.

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(Guardian UK) “Coalition talks loom in Israel as Netanyahu and Eisenkot blocs set to fall short of majority. Projections show votes for Palestinian parties surged in a tight contest that saw the highest turnout in decades.”

So, it looks like Netanyahu will be second-banana, but presumed winner, retired General Gadi Eisenkot is his mirror-image so far as Palestinians are concerned. Apparently, every Palestinian who could limp to the voting booth showed up, alongside (probably) however many Israelis can no longer stand the stench of genocide.

Excuse me for a moment, while I lean over the toilet and retch.

So, all the delays in an already six-year internal criminal case would be erased by his no longer being premier, but it remains a very complicated case and will no doubt take years to come to a verdict. I do not throw up my cookies over that, it’s merely business-as-usual in today’s version of world politics.

But this brings back memories.

(Guardian, Oct 23, 2026) “Israel launches collective punishment campaign in Hebron after two soldiers killed. Benjamin Netanyahu and ministers promise demolitions and forced displacement after deadly gunfight. The destruction of a home built without permits aimed to “create deterrence and exact a price”, finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich said. There was no claim of a connection between the building’s owners and the attackers.”

Flash back to Hitler’s actions in wartime Czechoslovakia.

In May of 1942, two Czechoslovak freedom fighters blew up Reinhard Heydrich’s staff car in Prague. Heydrich, who was Hitler’s guy in Prague, was a very enthusiastic architect of the Holocaust. I happen to now live in Prague and, if memory serves, he was the highest ranking Nazi to be killed, and personally very close to Hitler, who was furious and looking for a revenge so unforgettable as to keep such attacks from repeating.

Sound like Netanyahu? As we know, history may not repeat, but it rhymes.

Hitler’s choice was Lidice, a small village and hometown of the assassins. Netanyahu’s was a village in Hebron. Hitler’s solution was to machine-gun 173 men and boys, while Netanyahu killed no one other than the more than 74,000 Palestinians reportedly killed so far in Gaza. That number includes some 21,000 children, but there are no reliable numbers. As far as damage is concerned, one need merely observe the photographs of Lidice with those of Gaza.

On October 7^th of 2023 (the day of the Hamas massacre) Nissim Vaturi, the deputy Speaker of the Israeli Parliament, said, “Now we all have one common goal, erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth.”

Sounds like a ‘Final Solution’ to me.

And the Israeli election doesn’t change a thing.

Stay tuned for further news from Iran.

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France is on fire, not in its paper-dry forests, but with its youth on a rampage after decades of neglect

How do I neglect thee: let me count the ways,

• Underfunded education. In a complaint common to nations around the world, students see education paying the price of government shortages by a thousand cuts.

• Overcrowded classrooms. Too many students, too few teachers, and declining individual attention. All things that accrue when finances run short.

• Cost of living. Rising prices for food, transportation, books, and other necessities.

• Student housing. If you’re away from home, high rents, inadequate affordable accommodation, and even student homelessness.

• Financial insecurity. A soft word for declining scholarships and past student assistance failing to keep pace with available income.

• Employment prospects. Real problems finding decent jobs after graduation.

• Inequality. Students from poorer families, immigrants, and badly served neighborhoods all face far greater obstacles.

• University admissions. Too many entry-level jobs require a degree and entry levels seem unfairly handed out.

• Government austerity. Students weary of education spending cuts and reductions in public services, and lastly,

• Lack of political representation. No one talks to us, they just meet us in the streets with batons and tear gas.

President Macron, whom I admire (and is married to his former teacher), seems to have given up on his stated purpose being: when I am faced with a problem, I always try to put myself in the place of my opponent, and look seriously at his point of view.

Keep several things in mind.

• First of all, the protests began peacefully and, met with batons and no progress, turned ugly.

• Secondly, there are hooligans, from inside and outside most countries, eager to join a riot, as well as (in Mark Zuckerbergs lexicon) ready to move fast and break things. It’s not generally in the nature of students to burn down public buildings.

• Third (and perhaps most importantly), their elders have not been proper mentors of late, leaving a Russian invaded country to swing out to dry and, in the American version, supporting a genocide against Palestinians, and performing unjustified acts of war against Venezuela and Iran.

And students, with the clear vision and naïve morals attributed to their youth, understand with absolute clarity who is responsible.

We think they are children.

Well, think again. They know fraud, deception, non-compliance, bigotry and greed when they see it, and there has been much to see in their tender years. While the President of France is certainly no better or worse than most world leaders, he ought to damn well take his own advice, and see modern day France from a French youths’ perspective.

Great wealth has raised its ugly head once again in world affairs.

Instead of facing it down (and, at the very lease, taxing it), those in power have bowed down, and lined themselves up at the feeding trough. What they feed upon, is selling out their constituents.

And worldwide, our youngsters know it. They watch their parents take on yet another job to make sure there’s enough money at the end of the month, often failing even that. They are not blind to the billionaire’s laughter at failing to pay their share of taxes.

These students in the streets are the future of the world. They, and they alone, will build a future from what we elders leave behind.

Macron, and Trump, Burnham and Meloni, Putin as well, along with leaders too numerous to mention, think they are somehow in control. The students know otherwise. Does anyone seriously think Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg are titans of the future, rather than mere mistakes of the past?

One need merely peek behind the curtain, to recognize the Billionaire Wizards of OZ.

I’ve seen that movie before.

Adults are (and always have been) those who ‘go along, to get along.’

The modern youth of our world are entirely different animals.

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Tariffs were never the problem.

Potential profits for investors drove heavy manufacturing in America to low-wage countries, mostly China. The oligarchs who’ve run our country for the last half-century or so, fell in love with high tech at low costs.

Interestingly, with a little patience they could have done that in the US, as robots did the heavy lifting. Tesla made Elon Musk a billionaire before his manufacturing plants ever left the country.

Lower cost labor didn’t make a pair of Nike running shoes any cheaper for the buyer, just hugely profitable for Nike and its stockholders.

Cheaper was a race to the bottom for American workers, but Made in Asia turned millionaires into billionaires. The Golden Goose was hatched, and all it cost was the American middle class.

Ain’t she sweet (those profits), see her comin’ down the street. Now, I ask you very confidentially, ain’t she sweet? Ain’t she nice, look her over once or twice. Now, I ask you very confidentially, ain’t she nice? Just take a look in her direction. Oh me oh my, ain’t that perfection?

Written and published in 1927, Ain’t She Sweet became the theme of financial inequity a half-century later. The prez told America tariffs would heal the sickness, and voters believed him.

Coincidentally, the Great Depression descended upon us just two years later.

Yep, history does indeed rhyme, as Mark Twain told us.

But because Trump’s not informed, and because he never listens to anyone who can give him anything but praise, the writer of The Art of the Deal remains ignorant of things like tariffs. When the world tries to explain the economics, he calls it ‘fake news‘ and doubles down.

The billionaires love it. It takes the heat off them.

And they get to play Insider Trader on the stock market, adding several $trillions to their already swollen piggy banks. It’s not really ‘inside information‘ to watch an ignorant man play with something he misunderstands, as long as you’re properly tipped off, and have the cash to cash in.

It’s a financial dream-show for those in the know.

Wall Street is a zero-sum game and, if you’re not among those in Trump’s Rolodex, the zero side of the sum is yours to hold.

Both winners and losers, of course, are spread throughout the world.

Investing, whether it’s in the United States or elsewhere, demands consistency.

It can (and has) weathered the storms of good economic times and bad, so long as changes don’t come like bolts out of the blue. Our current administration, in its first couple of years, has produced a major lightning storm at home and abroad.

To the extent it was possible, the United States was forced to become a low-wage country. And that loss of our middle class pre-dated the current prez by fifty years.

So Trump was not so much the cause, his presidency was the effect.

Remember that. It’s important, and the main reason he is so misunderstood. We know who the guilty parties are.

They’re the billionaires, and the minions they spawned. Mostly they accomplished that by buying off our two political parties and the government they control. A half-century of destroying the single wage-earner family left a lot of anger behind.

The Trump political boat floats on that anger, and the wind at its back is widely misunderstood.

Every home-grown dictator needs targets.

• For Hitler, it was the Jews.

• For the current prez it’s the federal civil service (deep state), immigrants & “sanctuary” jurisdictions,

• elite universities & DEI,

• drug-lords,

• Democratic leaders,

• prosecutors & investigators on his trail,

• the press & broader media,

• Judges and the legal system handling his cases are there as well,

• all those foreign countries, and

• former allies who’ve been stealing our wealth for decades.

This administration needs no allies, including Canada.

“I’m the only guy who can change all that,“ he blusters. Which is simply a more outrageous personal statement about the change all presidents claim.

Do you ever wonder why nothing much changes as we drift back and forth between Republican and Democratic administrations?

The answer is quite simple.

The billionaire class owns them both.

Slowly, stealthily, and with great subterfuge, the tools of capitalism that made it work were removed from the tool boxes that once assured both its health and fairness.

• Banking laws were changed,

• unions busted,

• unregulated mergers encouraged,

• environmental controls removed,

• worker benefits reduced,

• and monopolies encouraged.

• Technological advances exploded without either regulation or constraints.

Like an undisciplined child, capitalism ran wild at the candy-counters, without restraints, causing inequality, market failures, damage to the environment, political short-termism, excess materialism and boom and bust economic cycles.

As the toolboxes regulating capitalism were emptied, recessions occurred in America on average about once every six or seven years.

Recessions flush the social toilet.

Banks and businesses (those ‘too big to fail’) are bailed out by government (you and me), while wages stagnate, and unions are kept in line (you and me again).

Chillingly, what was once heralded as the finest economic system ever to be created, the capitalism we flushed down that social toilet, has now been reborn with a different face in communist China.

It has been said that dictatorship, in the hands of a benign dictator, is the most efficient form of government in the world. China is proving what was once merely a theory.

Which is another story.

For another time.

But from here on in America, manufacturing mostly happens elsewhere.

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If you think there is ‘nothing new under the sun,’ this statement supports you, having come to us from the 17th-century French mathematician, physicist, inventor, and philosopher, Blaise Pascal.

Pascal is as relevant today as he was four centuries ago, and who would have thought it in America, beacon of freedom and law?

But here we are, with a Supreme Court in chaos and decline, a Constitution under attack, a Congress unable to legislate, and hundreds of American military installations scattered around the world, representing the largest global military presence of any nation. That’s a textbook definition of Pascal’s statement, applying to a nation that wouldn’t even exist until long after his death.

I would say that qualifies as a statement that has stood the test of time.

In the unable-to-strengthen-justice department, consider that federal immigration agents have detained both immigrants and American citizens, raising serious questions about constitutional protections and due process. Consider further that our current president is using executive orders to push the boundaries of presidential authority, sometimes into territory reserved for Congress.

Executive orders are perfectly legal when grounded in constitutional or statutory authority. They do not require a national emergency. But they are not a license to disregard either Congress or the Constitution.

Hang on there, dial up the National Emergencies Act of 1976.

The Act establishes procedures for presidents to invoke special powers already authorized by Congress during a declared national emergency. The perceived need for such a law arose from the scope and number of laws granting special powers to the executive in times of national emergency.

Congress can terminate an emergency declaration with a joint resolution enacted into law. But not this Congress. This Congress shivers in the shadow of an all-but-dictator president.

The emergency powers available to a president are not unlimited. They depend on the specific statutory authorities Congress has granted, and a declaration does not automatically activate every emergency power on the books.

The legislation was signed by President Gerald Ford on September 14, 1976. Since then, presidents of both parties have declared national emergencies, and many have remained in effect for decades.

Those that remain make a mockery of ‘national emergency.’

Consider a few examples:

• November 14, 1994: The national emergency with respect to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. That’s more than 30 years ago, and an international circumstance rather than an emergency in the ordinary sense of the word.

• January 23, 1995: Another prohibits transactions with terrorists who threaten to disrupt the Middle East peace process. Does Israel qualify?

• March 6, 2003: A national emergency with respect to blocking property of persons undermining democratic processes or institutions in Zimbabwe, an effort to punish associates of Robert Mugabe. Really? Mugabe is a national emergency for the most powerful nation on the planet?

• November 27, 2018: Finally (not to wear you out), a national emergency relating to the situation in Nicaragua, where threats to democratic institutions and the rule of law were declared an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” Nicaragua, for God’s sake, a country of no consequence to anyone beside Exxon Oil.

Essentially, the National Emergencies Act of 1976, quite probably enacted shortly after Gerald Ford bumped his head on something (again), established procedures for presidents to invoke extraordinary powers already provided by Congress.

It did not give them unlimited authority to do whatever the hell they wanted, although some presidents seem determined to test the distinction.

A foolish thing, no doubt, to leave so much emergency authority available for so long. But it was a legal act of Congress, and Congress has a long reputation for doing foolish things.

And, from the signing of the Act in 1976 through successive administrations, national emergencies have accumulated. Some remain in effect decades after their declaration. But those were times when we had reasonably serious men in the Oval Office.

Not necessarily bright, well educated or sincere—after all, it is a political office—but reasonably serious.

And then we got unserious. Who would have thought?

Donald Trump signed 220 executive orders in his first term and has continued issuing them at a remarkable pace in his second, along with presidential memoranda and proclamations.

Not every executive order is a national emergency, nor is every order unconstitutional. But the number, scope, and ambition of these directives raise a question worth asking: At what point does a president cease administering laws passed by Congress and begin governing in Congress’s place?

That’s a long time to keep swingin’ at the center field fence.

No need to worry that the Orange Man may become a dictator—he seems determined to find out how much of a dictator the American system will allow him to be.

On his first day back in office, Trump issued 26 executive orders, the most of any president on their first day in office. Many rescinded actions taken by the previous administration.

(Wikipedia) It began with the withdrawal process from the World Health Organization and Paris Agreement, rolled back federal recognition of gender identity, established the Department of Government Efficiency by reorganizing an existing federal office, reaffirmed the existing constitutional right to free speech, reversed the withdrawal of Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, reversed sanctions on Israeli settlers, rolled back policy on artificial intelligence, reversed the Family Reunification Task Force, pardoned or commuted sentences for more than 1,500 January 6 defendants, initiated the designation of certain drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, attempted to end birthright citizenship for children of immigrants unlawfully present or lawfully but temporarily present in the United States (such as those on student, work, or tourist visas), delayed enforcement of the government’s TikTok ban, and declared a national emergency on the southern border, accompanying orders to expand military support for border security.

That’s Day One.

Even God rested on his seventh day, but not our man in the Oval Office.

And there are more than two years of this presidency remaining.

Think about that, as you pull the covers over your head...and sleep well...

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An example that comes blindingly fast to my memory, is Elon Musk, that protector of any human right that happens to catch his fancy. There Is, of course, Free Speech, Guaranteed to Us by Our Constitution.

James Talarico, the Democratic nominee to a Texas Senate seat, is a case in point.

A recent article in the Washington Post, claims Musk’s total control of X (formerly Twitter) gives him outsize influence ahead of the looming mid-terms.

Outsize influence is what our Founders hoped (and expected) to avoid, when they guaranteed every man’s right to mount an orange-crate and address the locals. If no oranges were available in 1787 (the year of the US Constitutional Convention), an onion crate, or even a potato sack would do.

This is the pertinent thing about our honored Founders; one must recognize the times during which they were doing their fussing about with pouring the concrete that established America’s foundations.

In those hotly contested political times, local and regional newspapers, official government broadsides, political pamphlets, town meetings, and sermons were the available venues to broadcasting to whatever audience you could raise from a box to stand on. Unless, apparently, you were a preacher. Then you got a congregation, but they quickly tired of your unchanging rants.

But I say ‘hotly contested,’ because we were hip-deep in creating a nation. No less a voice than Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that, given the choice, he would prefer “newspapers without a government” rather than “a government without newspapers.”

We humans foresee the future only as far as our clouded spectacles can perceive.

250 years is a long way ahead of those times, to imagine such obstacles as the internet, social media, a nation of 243 million starkly divided political partisans, a crippling of our constitutionally guaranteed checks and balances, and a convicted criminal in the Oval Office.

Even an Oval Office was a long way off, government at the time being headquartered in Philadelphia.

Put yourself in those times, when a ride on horseback from Monticello to Philadelphia took about 7 days, fording multiple unbridged streams and navigating dirt roads that easily turned to deep mud depending on the weather.

But my argument is more about the megaphone than the box upon which one was encouraged to stand.

This essay may reach a couple of thousand recipients, if I am lucky. Musk’s ripping attacks upon Talarico will reach well past his X baseline of 14-15 million, as he frequently logs between 50 million and 175 million views per post.

Statistics from my potato sack, show that I, and Talarico, are being out-shouted at a conservative rate of seventy-five thousand to one. But then you know what they say about statistics, if you torture them sufficiently, they will confess to anything.

Talarico frequently shows up on my email, begging for contributions from we lesser mortals. Money is not his problem. Musk’s outsized megaphone against him is the problem that may sink his ship…and, statistically, all our ships.

A recent finding by The Supremes established this mismatch.

If you follow me at all, you will know that, for me, The Supremes are not a world famous Mo-Town singing group, but my chosen moniker for the Supreme Court of the United States.

Citizens United v. FEC (2010), ruled that corporate personhood entitles corporations to First Amendment free speech rights regarding independent political expenditures. Occupy Wall Street protesters immediately put up signs saying “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.”

What I didn’t know until recently, was thatthe court’s decision was based upon a precedent.

The doctrine of corporate personhood in the U.S. originated in the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company.

In that case, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.”

Precedent is a strong argument in Supreme Court decisions.

I think Citizens United was a case that all but threw republican democracy into the ditch, and stomped it to death. But, precedent won the day, and gave us the best government money can buy.

A decision which has everything to do with jurisprudence and damned little to do with megaphones.

What does ‘free speech’ mean any longer, if you, and I, and James Talarico, can be out-hollered, seventy-five thousand to one?

I know that’s not a hot-topic for you right now, with a mortgage payment due and a mid-term election coming up.

But, it should be.

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To quote from Alex Blasdel’s article in The Guardian,

“Unsurprisingly, practitioners of private equity see their industry differently. Yes, they admit, there have been a few bad actors, and yes, a handful of bad deals, but by and large private equity firms are not full of profiteering sociopaths merrily making the world a crappier place.

Rather, they’re the necessary fertilizers of growth and innovation, using their superior talents to rid companies of bad management, rejuvenate sluggish businesses and grow the economic pie so we can all continue to enjoy the relative prosperity of our developed societies.

It’s just capitalism doing what capitalism does best. They call it “value creation”.

Christmas is coming, and with that, one can go out and “deck the halls with boughs of holly.”

A preferred quotation of mine comes from the billionaire, Warren Buffett, who knows a thing or two about finance, and financiers. On private-equity return calculations, he says

“they’re not calculated in a manner that I would regard as honest.”

He was referring to proposals Berkshire had received—not every private-equity fund. And yet, Warren is a careful man in his pronouncements, and it’s worthwhile sometimes to peek behind careful language.

But, getting back to ‘relative prosperity depending upon who your relatives are,’ we might take a glance at the Ellison family.

I choose to call the Paramount Skydance handoff from father Larry to son David a case of nepotism because that is my opinion, and opinions have some legal cover. David Ellison was hardly sucking at the family breast, being 43 years old and having some actual background and experience in media.

Perhaps ‘dynastic corporate control’ is less caustic than ‘nepotism,’ as it brings to mind sports dynasties, such as Brady’s Patriots and Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs. The super-rich usually prefer the down-home sports metaphors.

In any event, Larry Ellison had the $billions and son, David, the need. I am told the Paramount Skydance deal tapped Larry for $6 billion and a private equity partner called RedBird for another $2 billion. That landed David the dual title of Chairman and Chief Executive, leaving dad another $250 billion or so to putz around with.

What the hell, if you can’t give your kid a boost when needed, what kind of father are you?

But it essentially calls attention to the future of who owns America, as the billionaire class acquires assets that multiply all by themselves, and their founders approach the end we all face at the hands of the Grim Reaper.

In the last ten years the richest 10% gained about $67.5 trillion, more than twice the $31.7 trillion gained by the other Americans 90%, combined.

Whoa now, better grab that horse by the bridle before it runs off with what’s left of the disappearing middle class.

My head spins at trying to get a grip on that.

When 10% of billionaires already had the equal those of us 90% below them, and in a single decade gained twice that advantage, when do we lesser beings simply put coolie hats on and go out to tend the rice-paddies?

In the wider context, our economic overlords swept up America’s industrial base and shipped it across the globe (remember as a kid, thinking if you dug straight down from Chicago, you’d come out in China?).

Nixon and Kissinger remembered that.

And I cheered them on back in 1972, because I was of the belief that one doesn’t go to war with one’s best customer. But, foolish me, I didn’t realize that the millionaires I’d grown up with hankered to be billionaires. And cheap Chinese labor made it all happen.

That entailed a major pause in the time-machine.

We’re going back now to the fifties and sixties.

Most of you weren’t alive then, but those were my business days, and millionaires were my clients.

They paid their taxes, had nice homes and sent their kids to private schools. They didn’t hunger for more. One home with a Cadillac and a Packard in the garage was enough. We lived on Lake Michigan, so maybe they had a motor yacht, but forty feet was enough. One golf club, one swimming pool, and one horse for a daughter was enough.

No millionaire I knew could even conceive of a thousand times as much, and now that’s the very smallest ticket to the Billionaire Club.

Then, somehow, Ronnie Reagan in America, and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, made them hungry.

Money became a game. Winning was the goal, and doing well was for suckers. Was it their kids? I lived through it, but I don’t know. They were nice people. Does anyone know Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk, and think they are nice people?

They want it all.

Warren Buffett is that last nice guy standing in the billionaire community, and he doesn’t hang out with them. Warren lives in Omaha, in a house he bought 68 years ago for $31,500. He plays bridge, and plays hands with local bridge club players and peers, claiming to have hooked Bill Gates on the game.

Private Equity is coming after healthcare, buying up hospitals, doctors’ groups, handicapped facilities, insurance companies, and retirement homes. Costs are off the walls, care is down, and many are closing, or conglomerating. I’m told that rather than investing in highly cyclical or asset-heavy businesses, modern private equity (the newest and most highly profitable version) goes after high-margin industries with predictable recurring revenue and opportunities for ‘buy-and-build’ consolidation.

Prisons fit that bill.

So does ghetto housing.

It’s just capitalism doing what capitalism does best. They call it “value creation.”

Private Equity is going to get it all, too.

The idea is, for no place the public can hide.

Sports is next, then leisure, then auto loans, banks, credit cards and student loans.

Then, perhaps government itself, but only the parts they don’t already own…

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I have recently been trying to find a syndicator for my political/social essays, in order to keep my financial boat afloat in these critical times. There are precious few, it seems, and most of those carry a caveat.

Absolutely no AI use (of any kind) allowed in the writing process.

That smells to me of panic, and panic is never a positive contributor to either civil discourse or freedom of speech.

I understand where they’re coming from (they being the arbiters of who gets heard where, or at all).

AI has pretty much set the writing world aflame.

• Social media sites offer the writing of a novel in your name (including publishing) with not much more than a vague outline of plot. Instant authorship, at the touch of a button…and a friendly fee.

• Instant First Drafts that overcome “blank page syndrome” by generating outlines or full-text drafts in seconds.

• Rapid Brainstorming, as AI (which hasn’t a ‘brain, but only a ‘memory’) takes over your keyboard.

• Automated plagiarism, taking the worldwide work of others (with no attribution) and using its brilliance to enhance your own dumb style.

• Instant correction of grammar, punctuation, and style errors (presuming you have any such talents), and

• The final crime of allowing anyone (including businesses) to reel off high volumes of blog posts, emails, and social media copy with, essentially, no human effort.

No wonder the editorial world of approval to larger audiences is drowning babies in the attempt to clean up some pretty murky bathwater.

But the babies exist, and are worth an audience, and I am one of them.

Okay now, some explanation is due for such a claim, and I offer to hitch up my diaper and do my best.

First of all, I authored three novels, two non-fiction books, three volumes of poetry, and well over two thousand political and social essays before AI was born and shit all over the writers of my ilk. I looked up ‘ilk’ in a dictionary, because I’m old and many of my readers are young. “Ilk” is a noun that means a type, kind, class, or sort of person or thing that shares similar characteristics. (No AI was used or abused in finding that definition)

Secondly, if I need to define the exact date that Winston Churchill overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh (as I did in a recent article), there are damned few ways to do that without stepping on Artificial Intelligence’s foot. In ancient days, Google was one such source, but it is now a prohibited site as well. Writing takes time, and most writers (of my circumstances) can ill-afford research staff.

Thirdly, there is the issue of images, and it’s one where I agree with those who argue against its use, although I have little advice to offer. We have all watched an AI-generated Warren Buffett or Barack Obama offer either investment advice or political comfort. The imagery is precise, the lips synched, and the movements elegantly coordinated, because they are stolen imagery. Only the content is changed, to protect the guilty and confound the innocent. I don’t know what to do about that.

And, fourthly, there is something we writers call ‘voice,’ which is a protection, if you know the nuances of a writer. If I were so bold as to define mine; it is generally quiet, politically left-centric, ironic, and with a sense-of-humor that is definitely mine.

Case-in-point, I once tried out ChatGPT on writing an article for me, giving it pretty much the above instruction and an actual article of mine to read for voice and content. I no more than hit the ‘okay’ button (or whatever was its equivalent), before text began to spill out like a ribbon of stock-market quotations

I was amazed.

Then again, perhaps we oldsters are more easily amazed than the editors responsible for determining who does and who does not get chosen for a ride on the Syndicated Bus.

My subject was well covered, its size exactly the proscribed 1,000 words, elegantly paragraphed (my first clue) and cleverly avoiding irony (a fatal error to which I feel it is simply not yet well enough trained) and accurate in all details (which I had no way of knowing, having been prevented from fact checking).

And that is precisely the nut I feel must be cracked in this debate over use or non-use of AI.

It writes well enough, but has no feeling for the voice of Ted Koppel, Warren Buffett, or Barak Obama, for that matter. It may well (and likely soon) break down that barrier, because it’s advancing at such a lightning rate. (Remember the embarrassment of early Google?)

So, I have a suggestion (as you probably knew I would). I’m a Taurus, (a problem-solver by the stars that control my very soul).

“Writer Agreement Regarding Relationships with Those Who Control His Destiny.”

1) Writers under contract will use artificial intelligence (AI) only for the purposes of fact-checking, except as allowed below.

2) No AI assistance is allowed regarding voice-overs, or images in any context.

3) AI may not be used in structuring or confirming arguments.

4) Fact-finding is allowed, although fact-finding text is disallowed.

I’m not a lawyer, thank god, nor do I knowingly associate with them. So this whole doodle should be given legal approval, in order that it can cover a hundred or so pages instead of the few items outlined above.

I rest my case.

It’s been a heavy load to carry.

The image associated with this essay was created by ChatGPT.

God help me find a syndicator willing to put up with my all-too-human foibles.

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Which is, in itself, an interesting comment on language and how we communicate. Doomscrolling didn’t even exist in the English language until those isolated days of the pandemic.

Those days turned us inward, and inward is often a dangerous place to spend our time.

For some reason or another, my wife and I escaped most of that trauma, and merely found it inconvenient. Most likely it seems, in retrospect, because we have always both worked from home, our offices a room away from each other, but plenty of time for conversation over coffee.

Here in Prague, where we live, public transport was not closed down, but anyone who stepped outside wore the required mask. We also are lucky enough to own a very modest summer-house, inherited from her parents, that gave us the comfort and isolation of the countryside, without restriction.

But our clients mostly disappeared, many of them never to return.

Language is our business, both translation between Czech and English and editing in those languages. Thus our main sources of clients were the universities, which were closed.

Then, like an additional small but painful stab-in-the-back, artificial intelligence (AI) came along with language applications to further muddy our economic waters.

The worldwide impact was job dislocation and that, combined with social separation, drove we comfort-seeking human animals into rabbit-holes.

Those companies able to do so, sent their employees home, to work remotely, laptops on laps. But those who had small children were already cramped for space, and a Zoom call interrupted by a crying or shushed child brought its own problems.

Suddenly, there were no shared lunches or conversations around the coffee pot.

What we did have, was disruption, isolation, discomfort and a surrounding world that appeared very much to be melting down. Nine-to-five became any time a boss had his computer turned on, and a 10pm email was expected to be answered.

Privacy was all but gone.

As an adjunct to that, we now had computers-at-home, which many of us hadn’t had before. Suddenly, the disappeared office coffee-klatch turned itself into the relief of the internet.

Doomscrolling was born, crying from the birth-swat of its technical father, and wailing at us from the middle of our living rooms.

Wives, many of whom had jobs as well, now had the added pressures of keeping some degree of order in a ‘business home.’ Marriage, which is a difficult enough negotiation anyway, was now a boat taking on serious water.

Many (not all, but many) turned to the internet as a last hope of contacting the outside world, and what they found there was political, economic, and societal chaos…plus pornography and old movies.

It has been said that “when all the choices are bad, people will make bad choices.”

Yet, returning to the subject of this argument, let me return to the menu of American news on offer;

• An upcoming mid-term election with huge political consequences, and an electorate in suspended animation.

• Cost of Living & Inflation: Stubbornly high prices for basic necessities remain a top voter concern.

• U.S. national debt crossed $40 trillion, driving a massive structural fiscal deficit, forcing the federal government’s net interest outlays to surpass $1 trillion annually.

• 30-year fixed mortgage rates hovered above 7%, effectively locked out first-time buyers and severely restricted new housing supply.

• Hiring has dramatically decelerated, and overall unemployment has crept up toward 4.5%.

• Partisan rifts exist, a majority of voters expressing deep distrust toward opposing political parties.

• Asylum suspensions, status checks, and heavy military presence continuously divides the electorate.

• Healthcare & Medicaid Cutbacks,

• Anxiety over an artificial intelligence bubble and its long-term impact on employment, and

• Pervasive mental health emergencies, with nearly one-third of American adults reporting chronic symptoms of anxiety or depression.

So, if doom and gloom dominates the menu, one can expect the public at large to be scrolling doom and gloom.

Never before in my living memory has that been the case, not even in the horror decade of the 1960s.

End of argument.

You’re welcome.

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It’s non-partisan, internationally applicable, and easy to achieve. It works on housing shortages for the young, the homeless, and those removed from the markets by exorbitant college debt. In the case of China, the problem has been caused by developers who used down-payments to expand their businesses, rather than complete the units promised.

One size fits all. Deliver houses and apartments.

Now, before you rant at me for ignoring the truths of 2008, or mindlessly bowing to uncontrolled inflation, let me make the case:

• matter where you live in the world, if private housing is available, it represents life’s largest and most secure investment.

• Home ownership supports government, because it invests the population in ‘staying put’ and building a solid life.

• In countries where saving rates are low, it encourages saving and asset growth.

• It provides an asset to be handed down to the next generation.

So, all things considered, it’s a good thing, right?

Conveniently to my argument, China and the United States share housing crises that destabilize their governments, but for different reasons.

And, just to get the argument on somewhat level ground, let’s agree that having the two major nations in world government sharing a similar instability, is generally a bad thing.

Artificial intelligence may be the juicy-headline race, but internal security is the long game. Both nations are spending enormous sums on AI, while housing problems occupy a very, very back seat.

And you no doubt remember the parable of the tortoise and the hare.

Excuse me for a moment, while I discuss my opinions on assets and liabilities, and why they matter.

Liabilities are, by definition, ‘debts or financial obligations owed to others, whether that’s an individual, a business, or a country.

• Governmentally, that generally means social benefits such as unemployment insurance, housing and food subsidies (but not Social Security because it’s self-generating),

• The National Debt is included, now $40 trillion,

• At least half of all military spending, including the Pentagon, because it purports to give us the security to maintain our assets,

• The costs of maintaining the Executive Branch, a Congress and Supreme Court, all three of which purport to maintain our freedoms.

The questionable adjective here is ‘purport,’ which means “having the often specious appearance of being, intending, or claiming.” But, without those three pillars, there essentially is no government, so I guess we accept what we have, purportations and all.

Assets, you will be pleased to find, are defined as “anything of material value or usefulness that is owned by a person, company, or government” (government, in this case, being a collection of persons). They include;

• Schools,

• roads,

• industries

• electric grids,

• and other public media,

• housing (both public and private),

• the other half of the military (which actually does protect our rights to ownership),

• infrastructure such as bridges, sewers and waste disposal plants,

• small towns,

• cities,

• airports and railways

There are other liabilities and assets within government, but the acid test is whether or not there is something left at the end of the spending that is worth more than what was spent.

If yes, an investment is considered a good thing and, in general, assets are said to return between two and four dollars for every dollar spent.

If no, much of the money spent returns nothing but the survival of a given portion of society and, although that’s important, such expenditures must be watched closely, but maintained.

My complaint is that, in current conservative American governments, fiscal solutions invariably include cutting back those liabilities that support society.

If you don’t yet see my solution for both the United States and China, I’ve not written well.

Print the money to solve both nation’s housing problems, AND you will be rewarded somewhere between 2 and 4 to 1.

The acquisition of housing assets in both nations will avoid those feared inflationary pressures and leave in their trail

• a grateful public, with

• increased faith in their government,

• the future of their kids and

• their personal well-being.

• Assets delivered (and housing is such an asset), means

• increased personal saving and the

• positive influence of affording the small expenditures that keep mercantile wheels turning.

In both China and America today, those are very big wheels.

Thus two great nations suffer similar road-blocks, both related to housing.

In China, estimates point to an overhang of roughly 90 million empty or unfinished pre-sold apartments nationwide. Chinese citizens have lost an estimated $1 trillion in unrecoverable deposits, due to developer defaults. Over 540,000 properties faced court-ordered auctions, in early 2026 alone, as distressed assets flooded the market.

None of those auctions returned money to the individuals who had made downpayments in good faith. Instead, they paid off

• secured lenders (Banks),

• local financial institutions, and

• state-owned asset managers, as well as

• bankruptcy liquidators and contractors.

These losses, in many cases, equal the life savings of innocent Chinese citizens, due to circumstances allowed by their government. Chasing criminal developers does nothing to compensate the innocent.

Putting them back in those half-million apartments would

• revitalize dead neighborhoods,

• reinstate renters as owners,

• save nearly completed buildings from deterioration, and

• rescue new owners from financial disaster.

• Local businesses would bloom,

• take off, and

• social life begin to swing once again, Chinese style.

Without that, every single building is a dead loss. As the Chinese government seeks to punish the developers, the real losses are in a half-million potential assets turned into unrecoverable liabilities. Even the cost of tearing down what has been built is beyond knowing.

There is no alternative, and not a week needs go by in a communist dictatorship that moves like lightning when it serves them.

The alternative is social disaster in a nation only beginning to thrive.

In America, the problems are more complicated, but the solutions are similar.

• American student loan debt stands at $1.86 trillion, representing one of the largest categories of consumer debt in the United States, second only to mortgages.

• 91% is held by the federal government, impacting 42.6 million individual American borrowers.

• The average balance is $40,000 per borrower, owed by those in their 30s and 40s,

• exactly the same people hoping, but unable, to buy a starter home.

• According to the latest U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) annual data,

• 745,652 people were officially counted as experiencing homelessness in the United States. Because they have no address, these are people who

• cannot vote,

• cannot hold jobs, and

• cannot pay taxes

Essentially, they are a dead weight on the economy, usually through no fault of their own.

Building houses and alleviating student debt would go a long way toward solving those issues, turning liabilities in the private sector into assets.

Admittedly, solutions in America are political, while they are dictatorial in China. Thus China can solve them more easily.

In America, we can wait for an economic collapse to force solutions

It’s a choice…

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That’s a quote attributed to William Faulkner, a novelist of the last century, for whom I have great affection. We’ve never met, but I have learned much from his wisdom and continue to do so all these years since his death in 1962.

Iran, Ukraine and Gaza continue the steady beat of Faulkner’s words.

No war has ever equaled the costs of its physical repair, while the damage to the human bodies and human souls remain beyond repair for generations to come.

Our president, who hungers for a Nobel Prize, has just informed the United Nations, in a speech at a world meeting, that he may “erase Iran from the map of the world,” proving Faulkner’s ‘illusions of philosophers and fools.’ Certainly no philosopher, our president has unmasked himself before the world as a fool.

And, we may pause for a moment to look more closely at Iran, and how the West distorted it from democratic cloth.

Immediately after the end of WWII, when the powers of victory divvied up the lands of the defeated (as inevitably happens when borders change and history is rewritten), Iran held an election.

(Wikipedia) Mohammad Mosaddegh became the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran in April of 1951.

Strictly speaking, Iran’s post-WWII system was a constitutional monarchy where the public voted for the parliament (the Majlis), who then elected the Prime Minister. After leading his political coalition, The National Front, to major legislative victories, Mosaddegh was confirmed as Prime Minister by an overwhelming parliamentary vote of 79–12.

Well, there you are. A democratic monarchy, much like Great Britain.

Not so fast, though.

Winston Churchill was still prime minister in Britain, and Sir Winston continued to have his finger in many pies. One of those savory bakings was control of Iranian oil through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, precursor to British Petroleum.

Keep in mind that, immediately after the war, Iran was the fourth-largest producer of crude oil globally, and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company operated the largest oil-producing enterprise and refinery in the world at Abadan.

Keep further in mind that Great Britain was totally broke after the war, and owed enormous war debts from Lend Lease.

During World War II, allied powers Great Britain and the Soviet Union occupied Iran to secure oil supply lines, forcing the pro-German Reza Shah to abdicate in favor of his young son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

After the war (and this is the largely forgotten part), a massive wave of Iranian nationalism surged, as its citizens demanded an end to foreign interference and the reclamation of their sovereignty.

Aha, wanted their nation back, did they?

Sir Winston, whom I have long admired, would have none of that, and here is where Sir Winston and I have gone different ways, although I understand his motivation.

The AIOC extracted billions in wealth, while keeping its books entirely secret from the Iranian government, and paying a paltry 16% royalties on what they did admit. Much of what was on Sir Winston’s mind, was that Iranian oil was very nearly his only source of Britain’s post war national income.

Need all too often overides moral judgement in realpolitik, but this particular brand of that bloodsport has shadowed Iranian history for seven decades. Those who judge the Iranian character through too narrow a lens, are (in my opinion) more harsh than necessary in that shortened view.

Stay with me on this, because it’s vitally important to fairness, when attempting to understand modern-day Iran.

Mosaddegh was a democratically elected, enormously popular, and highly educated patrician. A staunch constitutionalist, he became the face of the oil nationalization movement.

In March of 1951, after the unpopular pro-British Iranian Prime Minister (Ali Razmara) was assassinated, Mosaddegh’s political momentum became unstoppable.

He agreed to accept the premiership on the condition that the Majlis vote to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, which they did unanimously.

No small deal, it was one-for-all and all-for-one.

And then the dirty work of Western alliances began.

Mosaddegh’s democratic tenure was short-lived and defined by intense international blowback:

• The British Blockade: Infuriated by the seizure of the AIOC, Great Britain imposed a crushing economic embargo and naval blockade on Iranian oil exports, devastating Iran’s economy.
  
  Sound like Trump’s current intervention?

• Operation Ajax: Sounds like a dishwashing soap. As economic instability grew, the British convinced U.S. President Eisenhower that Iran was at risk of falling to Soviet communist influence.

Ah, the old double cross, double switch, when all else fails blame-it-on-communism game that became so popular at the time, known as the forty-year Cold War.

• The Demise of Iranian Democracy: In August of 1953, the U.S. CIA and British MI6 (a criminal group if there ever was one) orchestrated a covert coup d’état known as Operation Ajax. Using the tools readily at hand, such as political bribery, manufactured propaganda, and paid mercenary mobs, they successfully overthrew Mosaddegh.

God bless the Western Alliances that have given us so much peace and prosperity across the world (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran).

• Mosaddegh was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life, a fitting reward for a man of peace, constitutional authority, and national honor.

• The Shah was restored as an absolute autocrat—a pivotal event that, some would say, directly set the stage for the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

• Which brought us the Mullahs, who quite properly (as is their habit) killed off what was left of Iranian democracy.

• And brought us war again, not to free the freedom-loving Iranians, or halt their nuclear ambitions, but to support an Israeli genocide, and control Iran’s sovereign oil reserves.

• Control of oil is what Trump’s trumped-up attacks on Venezuela and Iran are all about. Not democracy (Venezuela), not nuclear bombs (Iran), but control of two of the world’s largest oil reserves.

What goes around, comes around, and comes around, and comes around…

And so, Bill Faulkner’s words keep re-arising across the world stage in capital letters: “NO BATTLE IS EVER WON”

The rich and powerful simply keep sending the powerless off to kill on their behalf, destroy the innocent, ruin their futures, maim their babies, and disrupt tens of millions of peaceful family dinners, ice-cream cones, and picnics in the park.

That evil habit has gone on for countless centuries.

For what, you may ask?

For the chance to do it all again, is the only plausible reply…

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We left off with

“Every writer loves a plot-twist,” and an interesting question arises with Delcy’s cooperation. Was Trump’s objective regime change, democratic transition, or a government in Caracas willing to make an oil agreement he thirsted after?

Looking at his history, the first two seem uninteresting to this man, while the third is a ball he has teed up more than once.

In what may be an overuse of metaphor, there are many more cards on the table, and a dealer with more to gain than ordinary morals would allow.

And so, away we go.

Venezuelan oil isn’t simply about American gasoline. Like the Hormuz cutoff, it’s not entirely about what it is, but where it goes. For years, China’s principal supplier of oil, and oil products, has been Venezuela.

Having a conversation about who-controls-what is useless without understanding the principal world powers involved.

Simplified?

The United States wants control, and China doesn’t want the U.S. to have its hands around the neck of its strategic needs.

Any diplomat involved in the conversation must know that.

And, strangely enough, this diplomatic impasse comes at the worst possible time for Trump, as he’s made a great show of kow-towing to President Xi. For his part, Xi has given back precious little.

A man of great depth, and the nearly unsurpassed power of a communist dictator, Xi is unmoved by flattery. China, in his mind, finds no use in flattery, depending instead on a 5,000 year history.

When a world leader susceptible to flattery, comes up against another without that handicap, it’s not much of a horse-race.

Our president, in many strategic conversations with nations such as Ukraine and Iran, has made a point of referring to who has ‘cards on the table.’ At the moment, Trump has none, China has many.

For any with eyes to look, China has been willing to sit back, while our president digs himself deeper and deeper holes, in both foreign policy and unwarranted military attacks. The question at hand is deepest of all.

Does a legitimate strategic interest authorize everything being done in its name?

Not by the hair of your chinny, chin, chin…particularly, with no cards to hold.

• The United States relies upon China for its supply of rare earths that power our defense and military systems, including precision-guided munitions, fifth-generation fighter aircraft, satellites, and next-generation naval vessels.

• Chinese support is vital in negotiations with both Ukraine and Iran.

• China is our 3^rd largest trading partner and, while the U.S. exports more services than it imports from China, the goods sector overwhelmingly dominates the trade imbalance.

• The United States cannot maintain (or even hope to improve) its international stature without a healthy and friendly China.

• At the moment, China is an electric-fence, and our president dares not piss up against it.

Nor is the Pentagon a proper candidate for sticking an oil trade conflict in China’s eye.

We might follow the money in this new endeavor, and determine who profits and who pays.

We have already met the Venezuelan billionaire, of questionable repute, who is our president’s nominee for squeezing the juice from what actors make the playlist. They are many and diverse, but there’s plenty of oil to grease these wheels.

It takes a particular brand of courage among the players, each of whom must be both willing and able to face a Grand Jury, because you just know in your bones that one will be called.

• Pete Hegseth, you’ve staggered and diverted your way through many a congressional hearing. But are you up for a hearing-with-teeth, the kind that offers a jail term for perjury?

• And Mr. Betancourt, you seem to be hip-deep in go-betweening a highly illegal kidnapping of Venezuela’s president. You have an estimated net worth of $2.6 billion at the moment. Would you risk that (and jail) to dip your hip deeper?

• And Delcy Rodríguez, interim Venezuelan president. You know what ‘interim’ means. If Maduro returns (as is likely, sent back by a New York judge) then your interim is down the toilet, where jail may or may not await.

• Finally, there’s the Wizard behind the curtain, the Master Enabler, our American president. When things go wrong for him, as they often do, he’s willing to throw any and all involved under the bus. He also hungers for slices of any pies that cross the Oval Office.

If you think this coat-of-many-colors private enterprise violates Pentagon rules and regulations, you are wrong.

Within its hallowed and spider-webbed corridors, the Pentagon is cagey about who has offices there (matters of national security, you know), but acknowledges many defense contractors and private for-profit suppliers are there, tucked away within its. 3.7 million square feet of offices.

Lots of shoes among those feet, all of them legal. And yet, it begs a question.

If the Pentagon can help remove the head of any foreign government it chooses, and another Pentagon Department can then acquire a financial interest connected with that country’s natural resources, what precedent has our president just created?

This is a president of unprecedented precedents.

Ever since the United Nations was created, the U.S. has argued that it does not fight wars of conquest. We claim never to invade countries to acquire territory, nor do we seize their natural resources as compensation. Whatever America’s considerable foreign-policy sins, that has been an important distinction in the postwar international system.

Then, our president stands before the United Nations General Assembly, and boldly claims, “To the victor belong the spoils.”

What are we to make of that?

Has he just created a business model for unwarranted wars?

And, if so, will it survive a Grand Jury?

More importantly, will it survive the Constitution and the most delicate jury of them all, that of the American public?

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First of all, we need an idea of how we came to have a Pentagon in the first place.

It didn’t happen after WWII, it was begun in 1941, just before the United States entered World War II. Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the project, and it was completed with remarkable speed about 16 months later.

FDR recognized that Britain’s desperate WWII dependence on American power offered an opportunity to dismantle parts of the imperial economic order and replace them with an American-favored international system.

I smell blood in the water under those circumstances.

Britain was in the process of losing its territorial empire. America, with its enormous last-nation-standing post-war power, largely constructed an empire of access, obtaining bases, treaty rights, market access, financial influence, intelligence relationships and strategic control.

None of the pomp, all of the ceremony.

The U.S. failed to retreat to its former shell of non-intervention.

In the eighty intervening years, America exercised enormous imperial-style power, all the time insisting publicly that it did not conquer countries for their territory or resources.

If military intervention is suddenly followed by a Trump declaration (before the entire United Nations gathering) that “to the victor belong the spoils,” we are introduced to a whole new ballgame.

Pentagon financial interest in a defeated country’s oil (Venezuela, Iran), may herald the crossing from an empire of influence into an empire of resource extraction. And now, having set the background and terms of the discussion, we’re ready to unwrap this extraordinary circumstance.

The Pentagon was built and dedicated to the defense of the United States, headquartering the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. It maintains nuclear weapons, plans for, advises and fights wars. Neither it, nor our Department of State, was created to own pieces of oil companies, nor any ‘spoils of war.’

Our president, in one of his fairy-tale dreams of personal power, has cobbled together an economic coat-of-many-colors, to divide up those spoils of war he talks so ungallantly of before the U.N. The plan is to seize and divide the oil riches of a country he illegally attacked, kidnapping its democratically elected president.

His reasoning? He didn’t like the result of that election, so he felt it his duty to intervene. The fact that Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil resources had nothing to do with it. Nor did the fact that Trump is our first president with a taste for enriching himself by force of Executive Orders.

Yet the Pentagon is now involved in an arrangement giving the U.S. government rights to 35% of North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a private company receiving access to Venezuelan oil reserves.

An arrangement?

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive…
-William Shakespeare

How in hell did the Pentagon get into the Venezuelan oil business?

• American military forces entered Venezuela and captured Nicolás Maduro.

• Trump said, “to the victor belong the spoils.”

• 65 billion barrels of proven reserves at stake.

• Sixty-five billion barrels is not an oil well. It is a geopolitical asset and, if America has no dreams of empire, it would eek no such assets.

Have I mentioned my adverse opinions on Private Equity?

A subject for a future discussion, but legalized theft is my opinion. Leaving that aside, a dude by the name of Stephen Feinberg came to the Pentagon after decades in private equity,having sharpened his knives on the dismemberment of various business enterprises.

Way down one of the less-known Pentagon corridors, exists something called the Office of Strategic Capital.

That’s what happens when you have empty offices to fill.

It was designed by God knows who to help finance strategically important industries. Probably stuff like the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex we only occasionally hear about (usually when they’ve has a cataclysmic failure). Why that would be such a self-serving office within the Pentagon is beyond me.

I thought the self-serving Congress was created for that purpose.

Somewhere between national defense and private equity, somebody appears to have discovered a new definition of the Pentagon.

Could it be Feinberg? And who, pray tell, authorized the Defense Department to become a participant in a foreign oil company? Please God, don’t let it be Hegseth.

But a new player has wandered onto the set from stage-left. A Venezuelan billionaire shows up, just when you need one, whose cloudy business history reaches back into the Hugo Chávez-era energy systems. Authorities in the U.S., Spain and Switzerland have scrutinized him in money-laundering investigations, which makes him a particularly spicy meatball.

Betancourt became an intermediary between Washington and Delcy Rodríguez during the transition surrounding Maduro’s kidnapping. Both sides apparently trusted him sufficiently to use him as a go-between, which means his meatball was sufficiebtky spicy for both sides.

And now, his company is the Pentagon’s partner. Wonders seldom cease, when the numbers are properly added among monied interests. One might notice there are no civil representatives in this mix, but we do have a lady in the wings and it is said that it ain’t over ‘till the fat lady sings.

This lady is not fat. She is the interim president of Venezuela.

If you have wondered (as I have) why Nicolas Maduro, the kidnapped former president of Venezuela, has not yet come to trial, perhaps the reason lies within the lies. Upset applecarts are not the stuff of billionaire negotiations, and sixty-five billion barrels of oil is a very large applecart.

Delcy Rodríguez, the interim president of Venezuela, is said to have cooperated extensively with Washington and has been negotiating energy and financial arrangements while consolidating political power at home. It seems to me she may be way beyond her depth in this swindle, but who knows?

Every writer loves a plot-twist, and an interesting question arises with Delcy’s cooperation.

Was Trump’s objective regime change, democratic transition, or a government in Caracas willing to make an oil agreement he thirsted after?

Looking at his history, the first two seem uninteresting to this man, while the third is a ball he has teed up more than once.

In what may be an overuse of metaphor, there are many more cards on the table, and a dealer with more to gain than ordinary morals would allow.

Stay tuned.

I’m not yet done with this.

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Our man in the Oval Office is not a fan of either government, or its defining and controlling institutions. Elon Musk, who was tasked by Trump to cut through the unnecessary fat on the bones of institutional government, came up short of the goal and left the job, admitting it was probably a stupid idea.

Being a stupid idea has seldom slowed down Elon.

Yeah well, leaving the heavy lifting to adolescents without proper top secret credentials broke a few laws in the process, but it’s hard to cook an omelet without breaking eggs.

There are two problems with that explanation: Government is not an omelet, and if you’re flying seat-of-the-pants as president, you ought at least to have a pilot’s license.

Fortunately, democratic republics, such as the one we were entrusted with, do not normally respond to whim. They rely upon

• institutions that restrain, rather than allow power to gallop through the bridle,

• courts that say no,

• central banks that resist pressure,

• civil servants who outlast administrations,

• scientists who insist on evidence, and

• journalists who verify rather than flatter.

All of which seem to be in short supply lately.

Trump’s political instincts mirror his business career, treating any such restraints as illegitimate, hostile, or treasonous. That’s a road to bankruptcies in the business world, so it’s no surprise that he declared for such circumstances on six occasions. That conveniently left himself personally untouched, with a river of financially ruined contractors trailing behind.

Not once, not twice (as might happen), but six times, which defines a mafia-style of operation in the development world.

Then he had a book ghost-written for him, called The Art of the Deal.

Carrying that formula into the presidency, he attacked the judiciary when it blocked him, and undermined the legitimacy of judges who ruled against him as ‘corrupt’ the moment they enforced the law.

Targeting independent oversight, he fired inspectors general, closed ethics offices, and disparaged whistleblowers, because if you remove the referees, the games belong to whomever you claim a winner.

Any ghost-writer handy could rewrite that as The Art of the Steal.

Let’s look over a typical day-at-the-Oval-Office in his busy schedule, fueled by a dozen Diet Cokes:

He may assault the Federal Reserve, pressuring it to serve political timing rather than economic stability. Central-bank independence (and the Fed Chair) exists, precisely, to prevent leaders from inflating away consequences.

Bad idea, he muses, anything that prevents. We are not a prevent presidency. We are a charge ahead and damn the torpedoes presidency, the best ever since Lincoln, and maybe better then that some people have said.

He declared war on any portion of the press that called him out, branding reality-based journalists “enemies of the people,” and criticism as ‘fake news,’ understanding that a public that cannot trust its news cannot meaningfully govern itself.

Write that down, underline it with a sharpie, then call for another Coke.

Undermining elections is working so far, not only by denying outcomes but attacking election officials, procedures, and the very idea that the peaceful transfer of power (arguably the single most important democratic norm) is anything but optional.

Interestingly (at least to me), is that the MIT Election Data and Science Lab notes that voter confidence typically tracks electoral outcomes; the winning party’s voters become more confident, while the losing party’s trust sags. Nothing unexpected in that.

However, 2020 broke this pattern: despite Trump being the incumbent, his repetitive questioning of election validity led to the lowest recorded faith among sitting-party identifiers (44%) in Gallup’s history.

It is claimed that Josef Stalin said, “the people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”

That might be why either the inability to see any changes connected to elections, or a general disappointment with results, has voter numbers sagging. Fact is, 40% do not vote in general elections, and (more depressingly) 60% stay home from midterms.

Yet, considering pilot-errors that often failed to land on the intended runway, the failure-rates are far beyond normal presidencies.

“Why do I no longer love you, Donald? Let me count the ways:”

• Tariff abuse is certainly on the list, as tariffs were illegally applied to begin with, caused substantial international business disruptions, and abetted an insider trading scandal on world stock markets never before seen in history.

• The 2025 tax and spending law hit the runway with an unexpected jolt as it extended tax cuts to billionaires, while reducing Medicaid and food-assistance spending. The CBO estimates the law will add $3.4 trillion to deficits over ten years, and projects 7.5 million more uninsured people in 2034 from the Medicaid changes.

• Aggressive deportation procedures are actually illegal takeoffs, as an estimated 950,000 to one million left without judicial review, many of them with shaved heads and in chains. DHS agents roamed American streets, masked and unidentified, essentially kidnapping individuals who simply disappeared into unknown detention.

• Unparalleled support for Israel’s Gaza-Lebanese-Iranian wars, understood by the world to be genocides. Original support began under President Biden, but Trump sits securely in the pilot’s seat at the present time. While millions die, America’s international support is in the toilet.

That’s hardly a complete assessment, but is enough to impeach any ordinary president and send him to jail. Consider that Richard Nixon was denied the presidency for a discovered break-in to Democratic offices.

Times change, and various presidents pilot the national political plane, some with more skill than others.

What is expected (and even demanded) is the basic skills to fly a plane and the moral authority to protect its passengers, both local and international, from harm.

A mid-term national election is nearly upon us. Trump is not on the ballot, so we know who will be piloting the plane for the next two years.

The critical issue for you, the voting public, as you sit comfortably back in the coach seats, contemplating a safe arrival, is this:

• Who services this plane, and

• what are their skills?

• Are they capable of maintenance, fueling, de-icing, and keeping proper schedules?

• Who sits in the control towers, and

• are they competent?

There hasn’t been much competency shown recently in these metaphors for diplomatic affairs, military success, governmental spending, congressional attendance to bi-partisan issues, and our political responses to international circumstances.

Those individuals who support the national pilot, our president, are either on, or subject to those, on the Mid-term Ballot. The entire House of Representatives is up forchoice, as well as one-third of the Senate.

Donald Trump will remain president, but these are the people who will run the Congress.

It’s no small deal.

Democrat, Republican or Independent, get out and vote.

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I got to thinking about this, and my mind wouldn’t let it alone, because I come from a slower time, a time when we thought more deeply and probably looked for solutions. It’s an interesting question, particularly with AI staring down our futures.

Over most of human history, slowly but steadily, tools could replace our muscles but needed us to swing the hammer or wheel the wheelbarrow. Becoming more inventive, the tractor displaced the plow-horse, and the computer pretty much made filing cabinets optional. These days a machine can draft the instructions, prepare the contract, write the letter, draw the picture, summarize the evidence, and offer us two or three opinions on how well ‘we’ did it.

While that’s fascinating, it runs a chill down the back of many of us in the professional trades.

Who really needs a doctor, lawyer, or accountant anymore. I’m a retired landscape architect, and remember thirty-five years ago when computer aided design (CAD) first came on the market. Landscape drawings fit the requirements, but all evidence of human touch disappeared. I knew it was time to move on, but if I hadn’t known it, the market would have told me.

55,000 mid-level architects lost their jobs, the guys and gals who drafted details for 25 years and had become expensive because of annual wage increases. The only skill they had was draftsmanship, so they drove cabs or became store clerks, and their wives got jobs.

No one saw what was coming.

If I look at an architectural proposal these days, it walks me through a completed (furnished and landscaped) building as if it was already built. Stunningly presented, costed out and ready. Already positioned on the client’s property, showing neighborhood context.

Well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

The International Labour Organization estimates that one in four jobs worldwide is exposed to generative AI. It expects most of those jobs to change rather than disappear. The International Monetary Fund puts the share of jobs exposed to AI more broadly at nearly 40 percent. Neither figure means 40 percent of workers will be fired.

Both tell us that change has reached well beyond the architect’s office.

The threatened jobs include work we once considered distinctly human. A young lawyer learns by researching cases. A junior programmer learns by writing code. An aspiring writer learns by wrestling with a sentence until it says what was intended. If a company gives those first attempts to software, where do the experienced lawyers, programmers, and writers of tomorrow come from?

Good question, that researchers fail to address. “Distinctly human” is all that disappears? “Thank God, Edna. There will be something left for us.”

Employers, understandably, see the attraction. A machine does not ask for a raise, health insurance, or Friday afternoon off. It can produce ten versions of a report while its human colleague is still considering the first. Whether any of the ten is correct remains a human problem, but speed has a way of arriving at the boardroom before accuracy.

There is evidence of a more useful arrangement. Anthropic’s analysis of how people used its AI assistant found more instances of collaboration with a person than of the system directly performing a task. That distinction matters (for the moment, anyway).

A tool that helps a nurse understand a patient’s records can improve care. A hospital that treats the same tool as a reason to spend less time listening to the patient has misunderstood the job.

But hospitals (and prisons, and homes for the elderly) are increasingly owned by Private Equity, and the one thing that remains sure in this fractured world is that Private Equity never gives a shit for anything but profit.

Keep that cash-box full, and beds unmade…

Nor are predictions of universal unemployment supported by the available evidence. In a survey of employers, the World Economic Forum (people I wouldn’t trust with my future, considering their past economic stupidity) projected 92 million jobs displaced and 170 million created by 2030.

“Across several forces of change,” they advise us, including technology and demographic shifts (each of which they know nothing). Words to soothe the increasingly fidigetty people in the streets, looking for work.

“Those are forecasts, not promises,” they say, hastily covering their asses. A new job somewhere does damn little for the person whose old job vanished elsewhere.

I’ve lived long enough to watch many inventions advertised as the end of work.

Work survived.

The people who had to change occupations did not always come out ahead, but that’s the history of labor. What makes this AI moment different is the speed with which it can enter an office, a classroom, or a home. It needs neither a railway laid across the continent nor a new machine installed in every factory or office.

The question then is, who decides what the machine is for. We can use it to relieve drudgery and give people more time to teach, investigate, care, and create. Or, we can also use it to shrink payrolls while concentrating the rewards among those who own the systems.

Guess which choice the people with the investment are going to select.

Human beings may not have become irrelevant.

But the market has never been especially good at measuring what makes us relevant, or have judgment, responsibility, affection, curiosity, and the ability to recognize another person’s distress, because that doesn’t serve the purposes of the market.

The godlike market, to which we all bend a knee, promises butter and jam on our bread and then takes away the bread. Except for those at the top, and they eat cake.

Research tells us we had better insist on those values while the rules are being written. Think for a moment about how much the ‘we’ those researchers we depend upon have had, allowing us to insist upon getting gun control and viable healthcare.

Then, consider our actual control over what Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, Altman, Donald Trump and Jesus Christ himself brings to the table.

The machines will be very quick at following whatever rules those dudes (not including Christ) leave them.

Sleep well.

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Who knows? In the extraordinary circumstances of this presidency, anything is possible. We’ve never seen masked ICE agents on our streets, kidnapping random targets without legal cause. Nor have we seen universities, law firms, Hollywood studios, and media sites paying extortion to a president simply to be left alone.

We tended, in our naivety, to think of an election as something that happens on Election Day. We vote, somebody counts the ballots, and a victor is declared. Simple, clean, American, and dependable.

But that comfortable assumption may not be enough to carry the 2026 midterms.

Our cowboy in the presidential saddle, both guns blazing, has already pushed the federal government further into election administration than any gunslinger before him. Arriving in a cloud of dust, horses lathered and panting, his gang of ruffians demanded state voter records, expanded federal citizenship checks, imposed or attempted to impose election-related conditions on federal funding, and fought in court for access to databases it says can identify potentially ineligible voters.

Back in May, when asked about sending the National Guard or ICE to voting locations, he brushed the dust off his chaps and said he would “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.”

Anything, that is, except Joe Biden’s ‘stolen’ 2020 election.

Anything necessary doesn’t mean our hard-riding president intends to cancel or overturn the midterms. Nor does he have the constitutional authority simply to do so, although the constitution has merely been a burr under the saddle for him.

So we might be asking the wrong question. It’s not necessarily that he’ll announce one morning that the election has been cancelled. The danger is that the crowd he rides with could create confusion, disputed ballots, federal investigations and delayed certifications, all the time knocking down white lightning at the saloon—while the courts lumber along behind them, deciding what was legal.

That conversation’s already been had, sittin’ round the Oval Office campfire.

Start with voter eligibility. Who are all those dudes, wringin’ their hands and lookin’ to grab a ballot. “Noncitizens is what they look like, an’ we need greater federal involvement in elections.” Our saddle-tramp ordered DHS and the Social Security Administration to create state citizenship lists, and his boys have gone riding hard to the Supreme Court, raisin’ up a cloud of dust, demandin’ to use an immigration database to check them state voter rolls.

Whether those systems accurately identify ineligible voters is being litigated. Litigation takes a while, especially when the defendant keeps haulin’ logs into the road, and the election is a mere 42 days away. Our high-riding hero doesn’t need a decision, he needs a complaint to hang his ten-gallon hat on.

More important for November, is what happens when Washington tells a state that its voter list contains people the federal government considers questionable?

Who gets the final word?

Traditionally, the 50 states do. Elections in America are extraordinarily decentralized. Thousands of state and local officials actually conduct them. That apparent inefficiency has always stood us well when the alternative is presidential control. The Constitution set it up that way for just this purpose.

Then there is money. Always an interesting factor in a country that lost its democracy down the sofa cushions to a plutocracy.

Riding high in the saddle, the administration attempted to condition federal homeland-security funding on states’ compliance with election-related requirements. including use of federal citizenship-verification systems.

States challenged those conditions in court, which creates an interesting form of federal persuasion, call it blackmail if you wish, but comply with our cowboy in chief’s election-security requirements or risk losing Washington’s security money.

You don’t even have to be quick-on-the-draw, just lay it out there. Wheel your horse around, stare down the local sheriff, and wait for the penny to drop.

Whether it ultimately survives judicial review may be less important in October than whether a governor or election official can afford to wait until February to find out. Every single elected official is on a different timeline, and the only thing they have in common is re-election or a dunce’s chair in the corner. Their entire life is one long climb, with different asses to kiss every step of the way.

Then come the people with badges.

State and local officials around the country are preparing for the possibility of federal agents appearing at or around polling places. Reuters interviewed more than 50 election officials from both parties and found preparations underway for federal demands for voting equipment, ballot seizures, investigations and agents at election locations.

Be Prepared, that’s the Boy Scouts marching song.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Dan Caine, has provided an important reassurance: he says the military has no plans to deploy troops to polling places or seize ballots or voting machines, and he does not anticipate receiving an unlawful order concerning the election.

Good.

But the military isn’t the only federal force available.

ICE, the FBI, DHS and the Justice Department all possess legitimate law-enforcement responsibilities. DHS has said immigration agents might appear at a polling location to execute a particular warrant or respond to a specific threat. DOJ reportedly plans a substantially enlarged election-monitoring operation.

Again, none of this proves an election conspiracy.

But imagine the possibilities created by combining otherwise separate authorities.

• Federal databases identify alleged noncitizen voters. Federal investigators open cases. A warrant is issued. Agents appear.

• Voting equipment or records become evidence.

• Local officials object.

• Demonstrations follow.

• Social media announces that massive election fraud has been discovered before anybody has established that it has.

Now the government isn’t creating an emergency, it’s responding to one. That distinction may prove enormously important.

A president declaring a national emergency before anything has happened, looks like a president interfering with an election. A president declaring one after arrests, demonstrations, disputed ballots and allegations of foreign or noncitizen interference, can claim he is restoring order.

The most vulnerable period may actually come after Election Day.

Let’s just suppose federal investigations or litigations prevent certification in several closely contested congressional races. Nobody needs to cancel the national election. A relatively small number of unresolved House races could matter if congressional control is close.

The argument then becomes not “We lost, therefore the election doesn’t count,” but something superficially more respectable: “These results cannot be certified until allegations of fraud have been investigated.”

Ouch. Never saw that one coming.

Which brings us to January 3rd.

The Twentieth Amendment provides a formidable obstacle. Congressional terms end at noon that day. A president, no matter what size horse he’s astride, cannot extend defeated members’ terms merely by declaring an emergency.

But, have you noticed, constitutional law and political reality are not always synchronized?

The question Americans should be asking before November is not simply whether the man on the black horse possesses the legal authority to cancel an election.

He doesn’t.

The question is whether presidential power, horse or no horse, can create enough disruption, investigation, litigation and uncertainty that the country reaches January 3 still arguing with each other about what happened on November 3.

My bet is that he damn well can.

If we wait for a ‘declaration of emergency’ before paying proper attention, we may have taken our seats way too late, and find ourselves watching the play somewhere around the third act.

That may set the stage, and write the strategy, for the upcoming 2028 national election.

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Such are the AI world and collapsing environments at the moment

So, which mousetrap is it, artificial intelligence or environmental chaos? Humankind rolls the dice and they come up snake-eyes on either choice.

But being human, and having sole access to that ‘big brain’ we’re so proud of, we’ve chosen to kick both cans down the road for the foreseeable future. Indeed, we are mice, and mice are more attracted to cheese than the possibility of a sprung trap.

But one mouse, one sprung trap and one dead mouse does not rid humanity’s house of mice.

But hold on, you mouse trappers. Physicists were stumped for nearly a hundred years on something called the Navier-Stokes Existence and Smoothness Problem.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

A couple weeks ago, OpenAI announced that it successfully solved the problem ( one of the seven historic Millennium Prize Problems). The job was done in 88 hours by 10,000 autonomous AI agents working concurrently. Physicists and mathematicians are now asking themselves (and each other) if the profession they chose is no longer viable and if, in mid-career, they have become redundant.

AI, as I have insisted in a number of articles, is only a tool. I may be wrong, and much is no doubt at risk, but break-though tools have both thrilled and threatened humankind for its entire history.

• The invention of the longbow, prior to Europe’s Hundred Years War, was thought to be so deadly as probably the end of warfare. And yet here we are, six centuries later, killing one another with drones and hypersonic missiles.

• The invention of the steam engine sparked the First Industrial Revolution, powering factories, steamships, and locomotives It fundamentally reshaping labor (at their horror), global trade, and urbanization.

• Electricity became a universal utility. Powering the Second Industrial Revolution, it lit up cities, prolonged productive hours, and reinvented nearly every subsequent modern technology.

• Antibiotics revolutionized medicine and doubled the average human life expectancy in the 20th century.

• The Internet and World Wide Web reorganized global information access, interconnected humanity in real-time, and restructured the global economy, each of them (as we have seen) for both good and bad.

• America’s wealthy trundled off its industrial power to China, in return for profit, and the former middle class lay wounded and bleeding by the side of the road. A billionaire class emerged to replace it.

And now it’s Artificial Intelligence’s turn so, hang on to your hats, but don’t despair (yet).

Other risks are now hanging off the landing-gear of this wobbly AI helicopter. Mathematicians are worried, but what of physics and medicine? Might Einstein’s theory of relativity have been proven in days, rather than decades? Might the cure for cancer have already arrived?

When trying to evaluate the risk/benefit values, it becomes obvious that the value of a new tool depends upon the uses to which it is put. And that’s a very scary and unknown element.

An AK-47 is a benign piece of hardware, unless in the hands of a school-shooter. AI, which may open all sorts of roads to medical progress, might also be used for evil purposes. A madman might design a widespread outbreak of a deadly infectious disease, such as the Spanish Flu tThat killed 18 million people early in the 20^th century. That was under relatively isolated circumstances. But the world is an open space these days.

So, rather than opening Pandora’s Box, it’s mostly a matter of who is allowed to peek inside, and under what circumstances.

That’s a very large and currently unanswered question. It has been said that “when the cat’s away, the mice will play.”

Perhaps a ‘resident cat’ is the solution.

Or smellier cheese.

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Don’t take that too seriously, because the U.S. made damn sure it never signed any of those morally complicated international treaties, for fear they might come to bite them in the leg. Remember torture? Nah, we don’t do that.

But Trump has taken time out from plans for his aggrandizement of the nation’s capitol to greenlight a $2.8 billion arms sale to Israel. Interestingly, it’s you and I who are going to get the bill for that, regardless of our support or lack thereof for Netanyahu’s genocide.

And, by the way, don’t send me any outraged messages, because there isn’t a single grain of antisemitism in the criticism.

It is not antisemitic to criticize a government for its actions, although it does meet the definition to blame Jews for a genocide. They didn’t do it, their prime minister and military did. Russians aren’t guilty of what’s going on in Ukraine, either. President Putin and his military are. That’s not splitting hairs, that’s putting blame where blame belongs.

But the costs of this morally questionable transaction is yours and mine to pay for, due to an interesting little snippet of foreign policy.

The $2.8 billion is being made available through the U.S. Foreign Military Financing system. The program was established through the 1976 Arms Export Control Act and is overseen by the Office of Security Assistance within the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs of the Department of State.

Funds given directly to the country in question (in this case Israel) are paid directly by them to U.S. defense contractors, supporting the American defense industrial base. They are not loans, they are gifts, and once given, the Foreign Military Financing system is topped back up by tax dollars…your and my tax dollars.

Think on that for a moment.

God knows there’s been a lot of criticism since Eisenhower’s caution pertaining to the military-industrial-congressional complex. These funds (and others like them) are distributed outside that complex, but directly to its base. Those numbers aren’t counted.

And the spending by the Pentagon has, according to its Inspector General, been unable to account for upwards of $35 trillion in what they call ‘accounting adjustments’ in a single year (2019) to force its mismatched books to balance. Since then, its books remain unbalanced.

Getting back to the Israeli case at hand.

“The United States reserves the right to protect its national and international interests. Our commitment to Israel is ironclad,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. “Israel has the right to defend itself, and the United States supports Israel taking necessary action to defend its country, consistent with international law.“

That statement fails on at least three levels.

• No international agreement (to my knowledge) gives the U.S. the ‘right’ to protect its interests,

• Our ‘commitment’ to Israel is no more ‘ironclad’ than to any other nation we might admire, and

• Our ‘support’ is, according to the State Department, ‘consistent with international law’

As in baseball, three strikes and you’re out. But at least baseball doesn’t require any open-ended financial support, other than a ticket, a hotdog, and a cold beer. Nor does it ask the tax-paying American public for an ‘ironclad commitment.’

The military package contains 20,000 MK-84 and 20,000 BLU-117 bombs as well as tens of thousands of controversial one-ton bombs, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

Just a year and a half ago, in early 2025, Trump lifted Biden’s pause on shipments and sidestepped congressional review by invoking emergency measures to process a sale to Israel that included 35,500 MK 84 and BLU-117 bombs. The sale went through after bypassing congressional review.

Presumably, they used up all that hardware in Palestine and Lebanon.

“Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition,” unless it’s Ukraine.

The State Department does not confirm or comment on pending arms sales before formally notifying Congress.

And the Congress, is once again on an extended vacation (so they don’t have to attend to the public work). God forbid it would let ‘we the people’ in on the fact that the arms deal is our stick of chewing gum to chew.

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In many ways, Osama bin Laden accomplished every wish he had against America, and then some. That’s not commonly understood, because it’s very uncomfortable to contemplate.

First, and I guess most importantly, America is no longer an island nation beyond attack. An ocean on each side and a friendly nation top and bottom is comforting, but we’ve experienced a terrorist attack so abnormal and impossible to understand that the plot couldn’t survive a work of fiction. I doubt any of us who saw it will ever forget the images.

Secondly, and way more to the point in many ways, bin Laden accomplished an event way beyond his expectations.

What, you say? It took us a while, but we killed the guy, and there’s no way you can count that as a win.

I understand what you’re saying. It wasn’t a win, and in no way am I sympathetic. But consider his publicly stated motives:

• To attack America spectacularly, (he certainly achieved that)

• demonstrate that America was vulnerable, (spectacularly done)

• provoke an enormous American military response, (Iraq, Afghanistan)

• make that response financially and politically ruinous, ($8 trillion +)

• radicalize Muslims against America, (more externally than Internally)

• and disrupt U.S.-backed Middle East governments, (Israel, Saudi, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan)

• force America out of the Middle East, (not accomplished, but hostile)

• overthrow those governments, primarily Israel, (not yet done) and

• create a new Islamist political order (the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, called by some the budding “Muslim NATO,” representing a massive shift away from total reliance on a U.S. security umbrella).

Among the other costs.

At least 940,000 people, probably more, have died directly from associated wars, with several million additionally estimated indirect deaths. Tens of millions were displaced, and those numbers continue to increase.

Meanwhile, America blindly created something hastily called the Department of Homeland Security.

Outright panic created a piece of legislation no one bothered to read before its congressional approval, and it enormously expanded U.S. domestic surveillance.

We remain chained even today to the murky waters of that legislation by DHS, hooded and roaming the streets of our major cities and kidnapping whoever they want without even the flimsiest legal consultation. We deport at will, terrorize others, and put the lie to future president John Adams’ statement in 1776 that we were created as “a nation of laws, not men.”

We fought two major wars, one of which (George Bush’s Afghan war,) was the longest ever fought by America, five times the length of WWII. During those undeclared wars, we tortured our adversaries, established abu Ghraib, and operated an indefinite detention center at Guantánamo, all without trials. Guantanamo was chosen because it was not on American soil, apparently caring more about the soil than the victims.

All of this before the eyes of the world, a world that initially was 100% on our side, and willing to support a wounded America in any way possible. If that didn’t radicalize Muslims against America, I don’t know what would.

Osama bin Laden knew he could never destroy the United States.

His gamble was that, frightened and enraged, the United States would do much of the damage itself. If there was any win at all for bin Laden, it was that.

We Americans have for too long failed to recognize the damage we have done, and continue to do, all by ourselves, in the fury of our loss and mistaken belief that might means right.

Those who died on 9-11, and the many who have died since from its result, deserve a more accurate accounting of what they gave their lives for.

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