Quite rightly, there’s a growing outcry about the increasing use of farmland for solar farms.

Can it be that the wording is the problem?

Because we have chosen to call them ‘solar farms,’ America thinks they belong on farmland. Or, because farming itself has become such a race with the banks toward bankruptcy?

The answer is #3: None of the Above.

Then what?

Then (quite obviously) it must be something else, which is the essence of multiple choice. The ‘something else’ is neither complicated, costly, destructive of an asset, or hard to find.

In what has become a ‘Twenty Questions” style of national dilemma, it is “larger than a breadbox, but not the roof of your home.”

The solution (chime in audience applause) is all, or nearly all, of what follows, and not necessarily in the order of listing:

• Flat roofs, wherever they may be found (shopping centers, filling stations, industrial buildings, and the like,

• Parking lots in all-of-the-above, with the addition of schools, business parks, airports and sports facilities, as well as,

• Inner-city apartment blocks.

I’ve missed a few obvious choices that you are free to fill in.

But, thus far, we have managed to avoid both farmlands and your or my private residence in the proposed solution. It might make a hell of a lot of sense for you or me, as well as our insurance company or mortgage holder, but that’s a personal choice, and we’re both off the hook.

My sources advise that, although it’s a tough matter to add all those varied ingredients, parking lots matter several times more than flat roofs.

I didn’t really know that, but it’s interesting.

Who hasn’t been virtually broiled alive, staggering across an enormous shopping center parking area, arms full of packages and having lost any idea of where the old Buick is parked? “Let’s see now, I came in at Nordstrom and back out again at Treasure Island, so exactly where the hell am I?”

If it’s pouring rain, so much the worse, but we’ve all been there, occasionally with a child or two in tow. While it has nothing to do with my premise, the day will come when huge parking areas will automatically mark your car location by GPS, and guidance back will be as simple as checking your phone.

Why, one might ask, have they not already done so?

So, back to concerning possible solar locations, while there are about 45 billion square feet of flat roofs there are 355 billion square feet of surface parking, almost eight times as much.

I come across the most interesting facts and figures, while researching problems like this. And yet the American public is focused on wars, Artificial Intelligence, and the upcoming mid-term elections at the moment, while solar power installations are destroying our farms and fields. All this, without a clue about looking into the alternate spaces available.

Covering only one-third of parking areas would still provide approximately 100 billion square feet, or nearly 3,600 square miles, of usable solar surface for development, without occupying even a smidgen of farmland or open countryside.

For those of you who aren’t as old-timey as me, a smidgen is a tiny or scarcely detectable amount. Scarcely detectable is what we’re trying to achieve in ‘farmland vs solar.’

So, now we come down to connecting the nitty with the gritty.

According to those experts of mine, pulling levers behind curtains like the Wizard of OZ: to generate all the electricity America currently uses, would take something close to 16-22,000 square miles of solar installations.

If covering a mere third of parking spaces gets us to 3,600 sq. miles, the whole of it amounts to 10,800, and we’re halfway there. Also, remember that construction is at ground level, not rooftops. It’s hard to fall off the ground and injure yourself.

Also, Artificial Intelligence can’t build it, which is a major side-benefit. As AI threatens mass unemployment, only skilled workers (at skilled-worker-wages) can get the job done.

Congress will love it…a little gravy for the pork-barrel in all legislative districts. Another opportunity to ‘bring home the bacon’ is always popular, and if you can shade a voter’s car in and out of the mall, all the better.

Just to wrap your head around what 22,000 square miles means.

It’s approximately 1% of America’s land, the size of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan region, and only slightly larger than all currently existing surface parking lots.

But here is the most interesting part of the idea to me.

If you also distributed those panels across the nation’s millions of commercial rooftops, warehouses, factories, shopping centers, schools, and airports, the country would accomplish the entire goal and barely notice their use.

Bottom Line: America would probably spend several trillion dollars rebuilding its energy system to solar. But here’s the kicker: The US would receive that money back through fuel savings, improved health and avoided environmental damage, becoming $1 to $2 trillion richer each and everey year than if it remained dependent on fossil fuels.

In the world of business assets, that’s a very quick return on investment. In the American world of government spending, it’s unheard of.

Plus (and this is a key argument), that asset would double its value every few years. Most government programs get more costly every year. This one simply makes governing more profitable.

Imagine the boost to industry and private ownership that cutting the costs of heating, cooling and running the machines by half (or more) would provide. Not coal or nuclear, but by a clean and environmentally sensitive renewable.

Of course there is maintenance, of course there are scheduled replacement costs and, of course there are middle class incomes for tens of thousands of skilled workers in all parts of the country.

But replacement and repair is the story of the light bulb..

Nearly all those necessary surfaces already exist—we simply use them today for roofing and paving rather than generating electricity.

Except, of course, for the farms we take out of production.

But, what the hell…

…they’re only farms…

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Who doesn’t love Ben and Jerry’s ice cream?

And who doesn’t love their decades-long support of various social issues? If it proved anything, it put paid the idea that all companies (as they grow larger) abandon their societal support.

Right this very minute in America, the issue is at maximum risk.

Need I reference Trump’s billionaire supporters moving toward ‘private equity” which continues to grab every public institution, or the American military support of Israeli ethnic cleaning going on in Gaza?

Probably not, except for the Gaza thing, which seems to have broken the Ben and Jerry camel’s back.

One of the reasons Ben & Jerry’s became famous wasn’t just the ice cream. It was the realization that a business could have a double bottom line that could support both profit and social impact. That worked so well they later expanded to a triple bottom line based on product quality, reasonable profits and social missions.

Before the merger, way back when Ben and jerry still ran things, their camel supported

• Paying workers fairly. They were pioneers in limiting executive pay. For many years, Ben & Jerry’s had a rule that the highest-paid executive could earn no more than 5 times the salary of the lowest-paid employee.

• Local sourcing. They emphasized buying ingredients locally whenever possible, such as milk and cream from Vermont dairy farmers, partnerships with nearby suppliers, and supporting small agricultural businesses. Their goal was to keep wealth circulating within local communities rather than concentrating it elsewhere.

• Hiring people who faced barriers. They deliberately worked with organizations employing people who often struggled to find work, including people with disabilities, former prison inmates, and disadvantaged youth. Many of those partnerships continue today.

• Charitable giving. One of the company’s most innovative policies was donating a fixed share of its success. It earmarked 7.5% of annual pre-tax profits to charitable causes through the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation and related programs, a percentage far above what most corporations contributed.

It was a pretty damned strong camel. But the list continued to

• Environmental leadership. Long before climate change became a mainstream issue, they promoted reducing waste, recycling, energy conservation, sustainable agriculture, and environmentally responsible packaging.

• Peace activism, which was all but unknown for a food company. Ben Cohen, especially, became active in campaigns supporting reductions in military spending, nuclear disarmament, diplomacy, and redirecting military expenditures toward needed domestic targets, as well as

• Racial and economic justice. The company supported organizations working on poverty reduction, affordable housing, racial equality, criminal justice reform, and voting rights.

Even before the sale to Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s publicly aligned itself with many progressive causes. It was among the early large consumer brands to support LGBTQ+ rights, including opposing discrimination, advocating for marriage equality, and celebrating Pride events.

Even a camel could see this company would never survive going public, or merging with a larger entity.

But no one asked the camel.

As global sourcing expanded, B&J became one of the largest users of fairtrade-certified ingredients, helping ensure that farmers producing their core products, such as vanilla, cocoa, coffee, and sugar received fairer compensation.

Probably their biggest contribution wasn’t a single cause but a different vision of business itself.

Leading a camel that thought it had retired out of the barn, they set the argument that a corporation should serve multiple stakeholders squarely on its back, prioritizing

• customers,

• employees,

• suppliers,

• communities,

• the environment,

• and shareholders.

When Unilever came along with an intention to buy them out, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield weren’t sure they could save everything on their shaky-legged camel’s back, but they were damned well going to try.

When Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000 for approximately $326 million, the merger agreement was designed to preserve the company’s unique social mission. Unilever assumed ownership and control of the business, manufacturing, and finances,

While an independent board retained authority over Ben & Jerry’s social mission, brand integrity, and charitable foundation. The agreement was intended to allow the company to continue its progressive activism and community commitments even as it became part of a global corporation. I

n recent years, however, Ben & Jerry’s independent board has alleged that Unilever violated those protections, leading to ongoing legal disputes over the scope of the board’s independence.

The breaking point was Israel and Gaza. Even the camel knew it.

In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s independent board announced that it would stop selling ice cream in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, saying that selling in the Occupied Palestinian Territory was “inconsistent with our values.” Further, the company said it intended to remain in Israel, but not in the settlements.

Some U.S. states moved to divest from Unilever under anti-boycott laws, Israeli officials condemned the decision, and Unilever faced pressure from both investors and governments.

Ice-cream eaters throughout the world might not care much about fairtrade-certified ingredients, but Israel, Gaza, and genocide were hot topics. And Unilever had its market and (probably more importantly) its shareholders to protect.

Camels seldom pay attention to those nuances. Contracts and courts of law care very much, as do Ben and jerry.

In 2022, Unilever reached a separate agreement allowing its Israeli licensee to continue selling Ben & Jerry’s products throughout Israel and the West Bank under the brand’s Hebrew and Arabic trademarks. Ben & Jerry’s independent board argued that Unilever had overridden its decision and sued, claiming this violated the 2000 merger agreement.

After the October 2023 Hamas attack and the ensuing war in Gaza, the conflict deepened. Ben & Jerry’s board alleged that Unilever prevented it from issuing statements supporting Palestinians or criticizing the war, while Unilever maintained that it had the authority to manage the company’s legal and commercial risks.

So, Israel and Gaza were not the original issue. The underlying issue was, and is, corporate governance.

The case is still before the court.

Will moral integrity win out over money and marketing? Hasn’t so far, says my decades of experience, but who knows?

And the camel has not yet made his opinion known.

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Those were the words of President Lincoln 168 years ago and are as prescient today as they were just prior to the Civil War.

He went on to say, “We have enough objects of charity at home, and it is our duty to take care of our own poor, and our own suffering, before we go abroad to intermeddle with other people’s business.”

Intermeddling in other foreign nation’s affairs marks the beginnings of colonial empire, and our post-World War Two intentions have never been so evident as they are today.

Colonialism is one, among the many, ‘isms’ that despots invented to defeat and control civil liberties.

So, lest we jump too quickly into causes and effects, it might be worthwhile to move a hundred years forward, from Lincoln’s Civil War to Roosevelt’s World War.

America’s late entry into that World War was fashioned in part by a national unwillingness to become involved again, having so recently struggled to recover from a 1918 World War, while also entangled in the midst of the 1929 stock-market crash.

Yet, another less understood factor, was President Roosevelt’s personal determination to hold off, until it was certain that Britain would lose its colonial empire.

Whether he was philosophically against colonialism, or simply eager to replace Britain’s with America’s, is less clear.

But history is shaped by ‘unintended consequences’ and war is is their birthmother.

Lend Lease, a program of shipping war materials to England, was America’s mechanical answer to ‘supporting without declaring.’ Even so, the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor sealed the deal on our reentry, as it was quickly followed by Germany’s declaration of war against America.

And there you go, with Johnny obligated to save Europe once more and come marching home again.

All of which is the historic background of civil abuse, and our subject is Lincoln’s determination to save America from such consequences from “even one hundred defeats.”

Comparisons of Trump to Hitler are (probably) a bit over the top, but as Mark Twain reminds us, ‘history may not repeat, but it often rhymes.’

In that sense,

• Cultivation of a leader-centered movement rhymes, as well as

• Persistent claims that established institutions are corrupt, while

• Framing opponents as existential threats rather than legitimate competitors,

• Encouraging supporters to distrust independent sources of information, and claiming

• National decline, followed by a promise of national rebirth, with

• Appeals rooted in grievance and resentment, as well as

• expansion of executive authority as necessary to solve national problems.

All of which are common denominators.

Yet we’re lacking certain elements that distinguish what we hope is a stronger democratic republic, from a German government that was more historically vulnerable to dictatorship.

Hitler pounded lecterns, and screamed into microphones, forcefully demonstrating where public opinion can be led, when banners and searchlights are artfully provided. And he stood before a nation that had been both shamed and economically destroyed by an outrageously punitive 1918 Armistice.

While Trump has been accused by many critics of employing some of the same political techniques, his MAGA gatherings are pretty mild tea in comparison.

We’re not quite there yet, but economic inequality and needless wars have us dangerously close. Pay attention to those unintended consequences. They ultimately bring the mighty to their knees.

Yeah,our sitting president uses personal loyalties, grievances, attacks on institutions, fist-shaking against opponents, and illegal concentrations of executive power. But, although he’s done that with a blatant disregard for constitutional limits that try to damp down those actions, the similarities remain.

The differences are greatest in the scale of state power he has access to, and (at least thus far) the resulting social consequences.

We might well ask ourselves how many defeats of our civil liberties have we suffered so far, on our way to Lincoln’s hundred?

PS: I’ve been to the Lincoln Memorial three times, and it still makes me weep to walk into that space…

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Before getting into the nuts and bolts of the Dulles Plan, we need to let a couple of obvious truths see the light of day.

First of all, in an expensive and multi-year project such as this, $22 billion will no doubt double to $44 billion when finally accomplished. Second, there’s no critical need at Dulles, it’s simply another vanity project upon which to slather his name…apparently an open-ended need by a president with an insatiable and unhealthy appetite for personal aggrandizement.

The Maga Man probably hasn’t personally entered an airport in decades.

Like all egomaniacs, he travels by personal aircraft and always has.

If you find that unflattering, I apologize for ruffling your feathers, but a peek into what else might be achieved by such an investment is probably wise. We’ll use the $22 billion figure, without speculating on its more probable final cost.

In other uses, it would likely make possible:

• Creating 80,000 to 150,000 affordable housing units, in a nation more desperate to take the homeless off the streets than make catching a plane more comfortable,

• Building 250 to 400 new elementary schools,

• Raising teacher salaries for about 300,000 teacher-years (at roughly $75,000 salary plus benefits),

• Creating 1,000 to 2,000 neighborhood community health clinics,

• Boosting public transit by 150 to 300 miles of either bus rapid transit or dozens of major improvement projects,

• Replacing lead pipes in most, or all, service lines in many states,

• Repairing thousands of structurally deficient bridges, before they fall down, and

• Providing more than 1 million four-year public university scholarships at partial support levels.

It wouldn’t accomplish all of these needs, but take your pick for any one of which serves the public more usefully, with the only caveat that it doesn’t aggrandize the Trump name.

Golly gee, I guess we could survive that.

In education alone, it would modernize thousands of aging public school buildings, provide nation-wide free school meals for millions of hungry children over multiple years, and/or expand career and technical education nationwide.

At a time when artificial intelligence maybe does, maybe doesn’t threaten job markets, America desperately needs to expand its trade skills and the trade unions that support those jobs.

Maybe if we could find a way to put the Trump brand on those more society-wide requirements, we would actually get them.

As for Trump International Airport, thank you, but I think I’ll take a pass…

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One can but wonder at a political party’s national leadership deciding over a half-century to take every possible wrong turn.

As this year’s mid-term elections rise out of the water like a political Loch Ness monster, the DNC finds itself $2 million under water, while the Republican National Committee (RNC) wallows in a windfall of approximately $128.5 million in cash on hand and no debt.

Money rules politics in today’s world and the mid-terms are no exception.

Even so, Democrats seem to feel this is their turn to win, by nothing more than not being Republicans.

I remember the DNC deciding to turn away from Bernie Sanders, a man who was far ahead in the primaries at the time, and might have easily beaten a blowhard Donald Trump, because it was Hillary’s turn.

I beg to remind them, it still is, and will remain, money’s turn.

If you’re broke, and money is the game, aren’t you simply lying to those supporters you still have, by proposing a victory?

Perhaps I simply don’t see clearly enough. But it seems that

• Democrats forgot who they represented. Organizations like

• Trade unions, and

• Those who were jobless, who needed

• Access to affordable education, and

• Healthcare that didn’t break the bank or make you a slave to your current job by something they called a ‘prior condition,’ along with

• Pension benefits that didn’t disappear after privatization, or

• This new-fangled ‘no-contract’ work that actually meant ‘no benefit’ work, along with a scheme by the already wealthy to

• Send our industrial base to China, so they could become

• A thousandfold more rich, while

• The Middle Class disappeared,

• Along with the ability of a single wage earner to support a family,

• Afford to send his kids off to college and, hope of all hopes, and

• Find a better job than his overworked father had.

Those were the failures that were eagerly enabled by a Democratic Party that simply walked away from its political base, joined the enemy, and then wondered why it had lost a war.

As far as I can see, it did all that because it was deathly afraid of Ronald Reagan. That old smoothie, the Great Communicator, simply communicated them out of every core principle they ever held.

They had held them too easily in those heady days after WWII, when America was a winner, and our industrial base was the only guy still standing in a world still smoking from its near-total destruction. What is the saying, ‘familiarity breeds contempt?’ Well, it favors ego taking over as well.

Hubris. Yeah, that’s the word I’m looking for, hubris.

We didn’t think it was circumstance. We thought it was us.

What America failed to recognize was a truth as misunderstood as war itself. Modern wars are not won by tanks and planes and soldiers, they are won by the industrial capacity of one side to out-produce the other.

When Japan or Germany sank one of our ships, we built two. If they shot down six of our planes, we built sixteen.

Because we were, and are, essentially an island nation. Protected by our two immense oceans, our industrial strength has remained beyond the reach of our enemies to destroy.

That’s not strength, that’s circumstance.

But we misunderstood that truth, and sent our industries to China.

Our real political strength is to be found in the Constitution,as well as the framework of government given to us by founders who accurately recognized who we were, but never failed to understand who we could become.

All men are created equal, was a joke in a slave-based nation. But it laid down the truth of who we must become in order to uphold that promise. A two-party political system that represented the rich, as well as those who would struggle to become rich, was the genius of our approach to government.

We were not a land of freedom, we were a land of opportunity.

The Republican Party (a party to which I belonged for half my life), represented both capitalism and conservation (when conservative actually meant keeping that which is of value).

The Democratic Party was the traditional protector (and advancer) of those who made the wheels of capitalism turn, and hoped to find advantage thereby.

Those are both reasonably accurate and innocent expectations for one to have in a free society.

And Republicans have done well with theirs, if you list economic domination of one group over another as ‘doing well.’ They own, and dictate terms, to businesses, most all forms of media, the United States Congress, its Supreme Court and, most assuredly, its Presidency. They determine international trade, the terms of diplomacy, where diplomacy exists, and which nations we favor, as well as those with whom we go to war.

Democrats are largely a political party of faith in some kind of change they are unlikely to define, much less achieve. A hundred years ago, Will Rogers (a well-known political pundit of those times) argued that,

“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”

Democrats latest wrong-turn in the road to rebuilding their estrangement with those they once represented, has to do with their failure to hug yet another supporter.

They’re no longer huggers by nature.

Case in point, Jon Ossoff, the senior U.S. senator from Georgia, keeps popping up on my computer, begging for any money to keep his campaign alive.

The DNC, whose purpose it is to supply that assistance, is broke.

Which is not their wrong turn, but it claimed my attention at the moment. The soup du jour of that wrong turn on the menu, is a budding interest in democratic socialism, each word of which is spelled at the moment with a small d.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are the largest socialist political organization in the United States. Not a political party, it is a membership organization whose members organize locally, advocate for policies, and often support or run candidates, usually Democrats, in elections.

Interestingly, it currently has over 100,000 members and chapters in all 50 states.

Heaven forbid, that a party that had lost its base voters and denied Bernie Sanders his earned right to represent the party in a presidential bid, would align itself in such a way. Not when they hadso recently abandoned Bernie, denigrated AOC, and were about to write off Pete Buttigieg for being gay.

For god’s sake (again, a small g), someone grab the wheel and keep this flat-tired Democrat vehicle from hitting the ditch.

The Democratic Socialists of America advocate for a more democratic economy, stronger labor rights, universal healthcare, affordable housing, tuition-free public college, climate action, and a reduced role for private corporations in essential public services.

And, so what is it exactly that the DNC finds uncomfortable?

• Founded in 1982, the DSA generally argues that major parts of the economy should be democratically accountable while maintaining political democracy, civil liberties, and competitive elections.

That certainly sounds scary to me.

• It grew quickly to its present 100,000 after the 2016 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, even though Sanders has never been a member.

Ah well, there you go. Sounds like the same thing Henry Kissinger once said about America: “It’s dangerous to be its enemy, but fatal to be its friend.”

• The DSA structure is decentralized, with local chapters across the country. These often focus on local organizing, tenant unions, labor campaigns, electoral politics, and mutual aid.

Whoa, those are all the things needed that the DNC abandoned, that financially destroyed them, as well as floundering for issues all the way down to bathroom accommodation in schools, and lost any viable way to win in the November mid-terms.

After two doses of Reagan, the Republican Party moved so far away from my conservative ideals that I had to leave.

After seventy years of co-conspiring with Republicans to disenfranchise their base, Democrats are getting close to losing me as well.

I wonder if the Democratic Socialists of America will have me?

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I’m told that the impossibility of perpetual motion is considered one of the strongest conclusions in physics because it follows from laws that have survived every experimental test we’ve ever devised. More importantly, it isn’t just a single law—there are multiple independent reasons why perpetual motion cannot work.

I was taught that decades ago in high school physics classes and have believed it ever since, because I trust in scholarship, and my professors were nice people who would not lie to me.

But that was well before Eisenhower’s warning about what those military-industrial guys were up to.

They had a scheme, and that scheme was quietly passed around from boardroom to boardroom at corporations like Lockheed, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and McDonnell. Back in the day, these firms received billions of dollars in Cold War contracts for bombers, missiles, submarines, radar, and nuclear weapons.

Part One of the Perpetual Motion Machine (PMM) was a permanent peacetime arms industry of unprecedented size.

Well, golly gee, we’d never had one of those before, but why not? These companies all existed, but had been seriously reconfigured to produce all the weaponry of World War Two.

Profits were off-the-wall, because who counts nickels and dimes when a war was under way? And here, all this nuclear fright, along with politicians needing to ride that fear to their next election, handed us a perfectly good Cold War.

Cold or hot, they chuckled around their polished boardroom tables, we can keep these profits coming as long as fear is a common human trait.

Part Two of the Perpetual Motion Machine being built was keeping fear alive.

Not a problem at all, most people live in a constant state of fear. Will their marriage survive constant argument, the kids avoid drugs, they keep their jobs, be able to make enough money to move up the ladder and, (for god’s sake) keep anyone from knowing about my secret bank account?

With Russia rattling its nuclear saber, and all the grief of colonialism having fallen apart, the prospect of wars-to-come is perpetual all by itself.

Part Three is, there’s no use in keeping this damn PPM thing running if we can’t make a buck.

Not only make a buck, but become insanely rich.

This deal has gotta work whether or not there actually is a war. Bingo! If there actually is no war at the moment, the fear of war will do nicely.

Europe worried about Russia as well, and there were a bunch of nations in Europe that needed bullets and guns. All the nations of South America hated each other…good market there. Saudi and the Middle East.

What the hell, this is not a lack of customers, it’s simply a marketing opportunity. Scare the shit out of everyone, and they’ll weapon up. There is no one but us left in the world to both produce and sell.

Hoo-ha!!!

Part Four, how do we keep the money flowing?

• Simple. We model the weapons industry after the fashion business. New and improved is the mantra. Better bombs, missiles probably have a future as well. Fighter aircraft will be like automobiles, everyone eager to get the most chrome and upgraded power.

• Fashion has Paris shows, so we’ll put on International Weapons Conferences, airshows that use commercial aircraft to work as cover for the real stuff…military jets doing loop-the-loops.

• There is no end to where fear will take us.

In 2025, global military spending reached approximately $2.6–2.9 trillion, the highest level ever recorded.

While that has been proven to be true, the main scientific reason perpetual motion isn’t the perpetual part, it’s the friction.

Friction can be avoided by greasing the machinery, and so the American government greased the big boy’s wheels.

I have continually grumbled about America’s military-industrial complex taking up 42% of our national budget.

My sources tell me The Pentagon’s budget is roughly $850 billion annually. But when veterans’ care, nuclear weapons, intelligence, homeland security, military pensions, and a proportional share of interest on the national debt are included, the United States spends on the order of $1.5 to $1.7 trillion per year just to maintain its national security establishment.

The grease comes from the fact that these corporations and services are largely private, listed companies on the stock exchanges. These companies, and their stockholders, make money either by dividends, or (far more commonly) by increases in their share values.

Thus, the government pays for the product at wholesale, but the producers bank it at retail to Saudi Arabia, Israel, South Korea, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and others.

And there, my friends, is the modern American Perpetual Motion Machine at work, courtesy of your U.S. Government.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

-Dwight Eisenhower, 34^th president of 5he United States

An interesting historical note is that an earlier draft of Eisenhower’s speech reportedly used the phrase “military-industrial-congressional complex.”

He ultimately removed the word “congressional,” likely to avoid directly criticizing the legislative branch in his farewell address. Even so, many historians believe he intended Congress to be understood as part of the system he was describing.

Money may make the world go around, but in the American political and economic systems, the military-industrial crowd are among the only ones who sing and dance.

Sleep well.

The best government money can buy is working for you in Washington, D.C. this very moment.

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And so it is with the current controversy over whether a percentage of profits from whoever wins the A.I. race, should be government owned. The argument for that is one of the few areas of agreement between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trump wants 5% and Bernie wants 50%.

The argument against, claims that government ownership would tilt the scale in favor of contract awards to those favored companies.

And yet, we already tilt.

The only reason Boeing hasn’t gone down the tubes of mismanagement, engineering failures, and production disasters, is that they are a favored military source of aircraft. Arguably, Elon Musk’s SpaceX would share the same fiscal difficulties as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, were it not for NASA contracts.

In addition to that governmental largesse, don’t forget Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Palantir Technologies, KBR, Halliburton (an old Dick Cheney war machine), and General Electric Aerospace, just a few of the corporations that feed off congressional grants.

When our dysfunctional and locked-up Congress deems to do anything at all, it usually means an increase in an already agreed contract is having its nest feathered.

Case in point, Pete Hegseth’s outrageous demand that an already illegal (because it was not properly approved by that same Congress) pony up billions already spent, as well as additional billions forecast to pursue that witless project even further.

But Bernie’s demand is being attacked as ‘socialistic’ in a country that is already hip-deep in socialism. Sanders would simply like a payback hunk for an American public that is being robbed of their intellectual heritage and having it sold back to them for private profit.

Private Equity sharks are already cruising the waters of profit, from home ownership, to healthcare, to public institutions of all sorts, and doing what its name implies, ‘privatizing them.’

George Carlin, my favorite dead comedian, had something to say about the subject of billionaire control:

• “There’s a reason. There’s a reason. They own everything... They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations... They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate...the Congress, the state houses, the city halls.

• They got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.

• And they want more, and they’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later, ‘cause they own this fucking place. It’s just one, big, fucking club…and you ain’t in it.”

• The reason they call it ‘the American dream,’ is because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

They (the monied class that runs this country) are the geese. You and I, and everyone else sitting in the cheap seats, are the ganders.

That’s why I chose to call this article “In What Is Touted as Good for the Goose, the Gander Is Often Left Out of the Conversation.”

• How did Reagan’s ‘trickle down’ economics work out for you? Does it seem most of it trickled up?

• Tax cuts for the rich were the way to go, because the rich are the ‘job creators.’ Did they decide that creating those jobs in China was the better way to go for American employment?

• Did paying for those tax cuts by cutting benefits to the poor, and ignoring repairs to schools, bridges, cities, and the towns you lived in, make you either happier or more secure?

• Did anyone explain the benefits to the common man of the economic wizardry behind making millionaires a thousand times richer, as billionaires?

• When the Supreme Court allowed business to contribute unlimited contributions directly to your Senator or Representative, did that legalizing of fraud and corruption in politics actually help you?

• How did Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran work out for you? We ganders fought them, and made the rich richer by cutting our VA benefits.

• The gooses worked (quite successfully, it seems) to put we ganders at each other’s throats, so we are no longer able talk to one another. That okay with you?

Well, it’s not okay with Bernie Sanders, the only acknowledged socialist in the US Congress.

Bernie thinks we ganders need a more equitable split of the proceeds that have come from The Deconstruction of America, a book of mine you can find on Amazon.

Sanders was substantially ahead in the 2016 primaries, until the Democratic National Committee arbitrarily decided “it was Hilary’s turn” and ruined the chances of a man who might actually have defeated Donald Trump.

Which might have saved us from

• Governing through executive power. Critics argue the administration has relied heavily on executive orders and aggressive interpretations of presidential authority rather than legislation.

• Relations with allies. NATO partners, Canada, and several European governments have criticized the administration’s more transactional approach to alliances.

• Tariff policy. Many economists and business organizations say they raise costs for American consumers and manufacturers, while creating uncertainty for investment, not to mention the largest insider trading violation the world has ever witnessed.

• Government staffing and institutional disruption. Overlarge and unjustified reductions in bureaucratic staffing and restructuring across most of the federal government has created long-lasting damage.

• Scientific and medical research funding. Universities, medical researchers, and scientific organizations criticized reductions or freezes in some federal research funding.

• Immigration enforcement. Critics point to detention conditions, due-process deportation concerns, as well as deaths and kidnappings involving ICE operations.

• Environmental policy. The administration rolled back environmental regulations and emphasized fossil fuel production, weakening environmental protection and climate preparedness, as well as opening public lands to drilling and privatization.

Sanders doesn’t much like these wholesale abandonments he sees.

Hard to argue with that, but the issues are far more pressing. Indeed, as Ben Franklin has asked, “can we keep the democratic republic we have been given?”

‘More pressing,’ itself, is too weak a term.

In my 91 years stumbling around America, and trying to make sense of politics, I have never seen the nation at such risk. Not during the 1929 Crash, the Second World War, the McCarthy Hearings, or even the horrors of the 1960s assassinations.

Were you there in the 30s, 40,s 50s, and 60s?

I was there, keeping the books for you, but damn few of us remain alive today. Every single time I put a razor to my face, in the 75 years I have been shaving, I have never been able to not think of Adolf Hitler.

Every day.

Who will remember when I, and the others, are gone? Who will care enough to answer Ben Franklins question?

We are losing the voices raised in rage against our complacency, while we senselessly bicker about Trump, or the transfer of control to a non-democratic economic hierarchy, Iran, Pete Hegseth, or the two parties that sold out our republic for a buck and a half...

The American Theater is on fire.

The doors are locked.

The sprinkler system is not working.

The Fire Department has not even been called.

And Mr. Franklin is watching, with great interest…

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At 91, and living in the comparative luxury of Prague, I dare to call myself a journalist, which demands a definition of the term. Mirriam Webster defines that as “a person engaged in journalism, especially a writer or editor for a news medium, or B) a writer who aims at a mass audience.”

The first of those definitions irritates me, when dictionaries use the word to define the word: Thereby, ‘a journalist is a person engaged in journalism’…what trash.

Beyond that, ‘a writer or editor for a news medium’ only applies if one defines Substack as ‘a news medium.’

You can already see me reaching, sweat dribbling down my side, and yet salvation may be found in ‘a writer who aims at a mass audience.’ Does it count, if one aims, but does not hit? I have 184 Substack followers and still ‘aim’ at a mass audience, on Facebook, LinkedIn, Substack and Threads. I aim, but have yet to attract the several hundred thousand targets out there.

I am not there on the world’s frontlines. I am observing there, but from the comfort of here.

I’ve written over 3,500 essays (you might honorably call them columns) since the turn of this century, all of them featured on The Dark Side of the Moon. And even that carries its own minor controversy: I had no idea at the time that the name was that of a Pink Floyd album. I had named it for a Mark Twain quote:

“Every man is a moon and has a dark side which he turns toward nobody; you have to slip around behind if you want to see it…”

That’s a long way ‘round to ‘a comparative life in journalism,’ but it was inspired by an article a week ago today in Britain’s Guardian UK.

“In Israel’s Prisons, Torture and Death Have Become a Norm That It Barely Tries to Hide” was the headline, and Nesrine Malik the author.

“This is the end. I don’t see myself surviving. They brought me here to kill me.”

These were the words of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya to his lawyer earlier this month. Abu Safiya was the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza.

Eighteen months ago, he was seized by Israeli forces and has since been held without charge or trial. He reports being struck with hammers and batons, daily beatings and loss of consciousness. The latest images of him show a much gaunter man than the one who had been the voice of besieged healthcare workers in Gaza, doing their jobs in impossible circumstances.

Being the Director of a Palestinian hospital, appears to have been his crime.

(Further in the article)

“Abu Safiya and the other Palestinian prisoners there never see daylight, a violation of the Geneva conventions. Across the Palestinian territories and Israel, about 3,500 prisoners like him are held under “administrative detention” that can be renewed every six months, indefinitely. Nearly 200 of them are children. Once a Palestinian is detained under these rules, they are essentially abducted by the state.

“Real hell” is what is experienced once detained, says Ali al-Samoudi, a Palestinian journalist, who was released earlier this year, unrecognisable. He had lost 60kg, about half of his body weight. “Prison today is hell in every sense of the word,” he told CNN. “Everything they practised with us was punishment and revenge.”

“The scale of abuse, torture and death in Israeli prisons is well documented but, every once in a while, an image appears that is Abu Ghraib-like in its relish and abandon.

Earlier this month, a photo taken by an Israeli soldier was posted on social media. It shows a Palestinian man from Gaza face down, stripped to his underwear, bound with ropes to a plank and an iron rod. The caption said “good morning” in Hebrew. The echoes of Abu Ghraib were all there, the sinister gloating, the sexualised humiliation of stripped prisoners, the taking of photos as some sort of trophy.”

I remember, and have written many articles about, the American criminal acts at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Except for the 200 children, the horrors are the same.

Before his detention, Safiya repeatedly declined opportunities to leave, even after his hospital came under repeated attack, he himself was wounded, his 15-year-old son was killed in an airstrike, other colleagues were killed or detained, and medical resources had nearly collapsed.

Abu Safiya shrugged his shoulder at the risk of being re-arrested, saying it was worth the work he would continue to do.

And there lies the difference between journalism and journalists, at least for me.

The answer is not to be found within a dictionary, and I can find no comfort there. It lies within the character of those who consider it not a calling, but a profession and social construct worth prison, torture, and even death.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that at least 259 journalists and media workers had been killed in the conflict by early April 2026. Most were Palestinian, with additional Lebanese and Israeli journalists also killed.

If you have the stomach for it, here is more from an Associated Press article. By every major international monitoring organization’s assessment, the Gaza conflict since October 2023 has become the deadliest conflict for journalists since modern record-keeping began, exceeding the toll of previous wars such as those in Iraq, Syria, the Balkans, and Vietnam.

So, here I am, old, broke and yet within the confines of what is a comfortable life, although my boat rides economically lower and lower in the water.

But a journalist?

I would like to think so…

…but the world outside my door says no.

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In Trump’s dithering, quivering, slithering mind, desperation for headlines appears to direct his presidential actions, both at home and abroad.

‘Stir things up, piss everyone off, and unbalance all that somehow remains in balance’

are his mantras.

Having kidnapped the democratically elected president of Venezuela, and his wife, barged into a wildly mistaken invasion of Iran (urged on by co-criminal Netanyahu of Israel), and put the US Navy to work blasting suspected drug runners out of international waters, it seems his next victim is Cuba, Marko Rubio’s homeland of origin.

I remember when Fidel Castro was in New York, begging for a re-established relationship with the United States.

The year was 1959, and I was twenty-four years old.

Seeking a relationship with the United States, there he was, only about three months after dictator Batista had packed his bag and fled Cuba.

During this trip, Castro visited New York, Washington, Boston, Princeton, and other U.S. cities. He spoke to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, appeared on television, met business leaders, all the time seeking continued trade, investment, and good relations with the United States. Needing that return of relations in order to advance his socialist agenda for Cuba, he had no interest in communism at the time.

To step back for a moment, Castro didn’t simply fall out of the sky as a terrorist, which his beard and military fatigues might imply.

The son of a prosperous landowner with a successful sugar plantation, he attended prestigious Jesuit schools, developing a reputation for intelligence, athleticism, discipline, and a strong will. Studying law at the University of Havana, he took a deep interest in Cuban nationalism, social justice, anti-imperialism, and constitutional government, non of which existed at the time under its dictator, Fulgencio Batista.

A study in contrasts, on one hand, Cuba had one of Latin America’s highest per-capita incomes. Havana was a modern city, literacy and life expectancy were relatively high, and American gambling tourists flocked there for its casinos.

On the other hand, wealth was concentrated in relatively few hands, rural poverty was widespread, seasonal unemployment plagued sugar workers, political corruption was endemic, and the American mobsters owned the casinos and flashy hotels.

Cubans felt their country functioned entirely for wealthy Cubans and foreign investors.

If that sounds like America today, it’s no accident and (perhaps) something to think about.

Long story short, Castro’s movement attracted support from a remarkably broad coalition of students, peasants, middle-class professionals, Catholic reformers, liberals, and nationalists. They hoped for, and expected, a restoration of democracy, honest government, land reform, reduction of corruption, and greater Cuban independence from foreign influence.

Only after taking power, and being snubbed by Western financial help, did Russia offer to align Cuba with the Soviet Union. And, having no viable alternative, Fidel accepted.

It could have been different, but how did Cuba change?

• Castro’s most widely recognized achievement was the creation of a universal healthcare system. By the 1970s, healthcare became free at the point of service, every community had access to clinics and physicians, infant mortality fell dramatically, and life expectancy rose to levels comparable with many developed countries.

• Cuba developed a strong biotechnology and vaccine sector, while Cuban doctors have also served in dozens of countries after natural disasters and health crises, earning international recognition.

• One of Castro’s earliest priorities was literacy. The 1961 Literacy Campaign mobilized hundreds of thousands of volunteers, many of them teenagers, to teach reading and writing in rural areas. Within a few years literacy became nearly universal, education became free through university, rural schools expanded dramatically, and Cuba today has one of the highest literacy rates in the Americas.

• Reduced inequality. Before the revolution, much agricultural land was concentrated in large estates, while many rural families lacked electricity, schools, and medical care. The revolution redistributed land, expanded housing, extended electricity, increased pensions, as well as broadening access to healthcare and education.

• National independence. Before 1959, the United States exerted major influence over Cuban politics, American corporations owned significant parts of the economy, and organized crime had visible interests in Havana’s casino industry. Castro ended much of that foreign economic influence, nationalized industries, and asserted Cuba’s independence. For supporters, this remains one of his greatest accomplishments.

• Scientific development. Despite limited resources, Cuba invested heavily in medical research, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and vaccine development. The country became a notable exporter of vaccines and medical expertise relative to its size.

And what, dare say, was the cost?

All these achievements came with serious costs that are well documented, although that documentation is American, and comes with a light salt and peppering of prejudice.

• It includes one-party rule, with no competitive national elections,

• restrictions on freedom of speech, press, and association,

• imprisonment of political opponents,

• extensive state surveillance,

• waves of emigration, with many Cubans leaving for economic or political reasons, as well as

• chronic economic shortages, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, causing

• limited consumer choice and low wages.

In fairness, many of these shortcomings we share in the United States, without the benefits of universal healthcare, reduction of inequality, and free education through university levels.

But America (an experiment in Republican Democracy), under Trump, simply cannot bear to have Cuba (an experiment in Socialist Universalism) existing within 90 miles of our national border.

The two Trump administrations have consistently pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” on Cuba, but probably eyeing them as another potential ‘American Riviera,’ such as those envisioned in Gaza and Lebanon by his son-in-law.

Specifics differed between his first and second administrations. The first included

• Reimposing travel restrictions,

• curtailing “people-to-people” educational travel,

• prohibiting cruise ships from sailing from the U.S. to Cuba,

• tightened rules on individual travel,

• restrictions on remittances, limiting the amount Cuban Americans could send to relatives,

• barring Americans from doing business with hundreds of Cuban hotels, shops, marinas, and companies connected to the military or security services, and

• allowing Americans to sue foreign companies that profited from property confiscated after the Cuban Revolution. This created legal risks for foreign investors in Cuba, as well as

• designating Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism and thereby triggering additional financial and banking restrictions.

No doubt with Marco Rubio whispering in his ear, early indications for his second deep drink at the well of presidency are not favorable.

• Reversing the Biden administration’s late-term easing, by reinstating Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, and restoring the expanded Cuba Restricted List,

• Further restrictions on tourism,

• Adding more Cuban hotels and accommodations to the prohibited list for U.S. travelers,

• Increasing enforcement of restrictions on transactions involving military-linked entities,

• Adding Visa and travel restrictions,

• Imposing additional limits affecting some categories of Cuban nationals seeking entry to the United States (no more Marco Rubios),

• Authorizing additional sanctions against individuals and entities involved in sectors such as energy, mining, finance, defense, and security, as well as officials accused of repression or corruption, which also increases the risk of sanctions for some non-U.S. firms doing business with sanctioned Cuban entities, as well as

• Additional pressure, amounting to a blockade on Cuba’s oil imports, by targeting companies and countries that supply fuel to the island.

It’s fair to say that seldom (if ever) has a leader of America slathered the paint of hypocrisy over so wide a segment of the globe.

Or maybe it’s not fair to say.

You be the judge.

I will say it anyway.

Cuba is next on the Trump list of invasions, in order to distract attention from his national (and international) race-to-the-bottom of public support…

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I say, ‘my America,’ and yet it is no more mine than yours.

Even so, at age ninety-one, having been born in 1935 (the middle of the Great Depression), I’ve witnessed all or part of ten decades. Only one percent of the tribe born in that year survive today, and I am among them.

But we’re leaving the scene quickly, and I awakened this morning with the lyrics to ‘America the Beautiful’ in my mind and could not shake it.

It’s there still, do you remember?

O beautiful for spacious skies
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good
With brotherhood
From sea to shining sea

Only the first stanza is commonly sung, and probably not even that anymore. Most Americans have never heard, let alone sung, the other three.

But those were the times we keep being told we can no longer go back to, and I wonder why.

In the fifties, when I was twenty, we all paid our taxes, the wealthy as well as the rest of us.

• We had no national debt,

• no homeless except for a few hoboes along the railroads.

• Anyone with a lawnmower and a pickup truck could go into business, and watch it grow, as quickly as the grass they cut.

• There was farmland a block west of my home in Evanston,

• WWII vets were just graduated from university educations given free, and

• moving into Levittown homes with guaranteed mortgages at subsidized interest rates.

• We were the industrial kings of the hill,

• with a middle class where one wage earner could support a family.

A bit short of brotherhood, perhaps, but that was the promise.

Remember, the statement that ‘all me are created equal’ was not a fact in our slave-owned nation, but a promise of what was to come.

The second stanza is remarkably self-critical.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw
Confirm thy soul in self-control
Thy liberty in law!

The poem was first printed in a weekly newspaper, The Congregationalist, on July 4, 1895, and soon set to music, already poking at the ‘flaws’ yet to come. We have always been an immigrant nation, having done what we could to eliminate the native population that preceded us by 12,000 years.

But, somehow, we are now accelerating that process with masked DHS agents intimidating, as well as kidnapping and deporting both citizen and non-citizen students and others without due process.

Stern, impassioned stress meets modern, armed technology, and passion comes second to racism. There are those, perhaps even more today, who would have our proud multiracial society remain steadfastly European and white.

Thy liberty in law line has become a sick presidential joke.

Looked at with care, the third stanza focuses on character over wealth.

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine

While the first part suggests an American willingness to die for freedoms, the second proposes that prosperity should be judged by ethics, not merely by riches. Written well before the bilateral (Republican and Democrat co-conspied) financial deconstruction of America, the final lines suggest its future.

Certainly the multiplication of millionaire status by a thousandfold was not yet in sight, divine or not.

The fourth (and final) stanza is unashamedly inspirational.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea

And so we come full circle, not describing America as it was, but as it ought to become—a nation whose achievements are not built on suffering.

Our ‘alabaster cities’ are perhaps a bit less alabaster and a tad more falling plaster, Chicago having last attended to its infrastructure just after the Civil War. Undimmed by human tears is a bit of a stretch as well, with Mom, Dad, and the eldest child all working to keep the family boat afloat.

I was raised at family dinners, served precisely at 6PM, and eaten (if you can picture this) in candlelight, with conversation required among the four of us, my brother, Mom and Dad. Eighty years later, candlelight and conversation still dominates a slightly later dinner at eight.

As to God’s grace and brotherhood, it’s under increased stress.

Stressed indeed, as those we once looked up to for guidance in those matters have used their God’s financial grace to buy up and withhold the machinery of democratic government.

If that’s harsh, so it must be, as the billionaire class guards (and increases) its personal thousandfold stash of cash by demanding ever less tax burden and ever more worker concessions.

Taken together, America the Beautiful is less a patriotic celebration than a prayer.

Each stanza praises America, while immediately asking it to become better: more just, more self-controlled, more compassionate, and more noble.

We are constantly reminded that America is a continuing experiment in Republican Democratic Governance (hence the names of our two political parties) and, as Ben Franklin reminded us, “a Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

I wonder, as I sleep less and wake earlier in my elder years, if we can keep it under present circumstances.

Many historians and literary scholars have noted that America the Beautiful was an anthem of patriotism tempered by moral responsibility, which is why the song has endured across political and cultural divides.

But has it endured? I’ve not heard it sung in recent memory.

The repeated refrain, “America! America!” is always followed not by triumph, but by a petition for grace, healing, refinement, or brotherhood.

That structure gives the anthem its distinctive character.

But begs the question of whether America’s distinctive character is itself at risk?

Sleep well.

Don’t let these questions interrupt your morning sleep, as they do mine…

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The Human Control of Israeli AI Warfare ‘Could Be Very Brief.’

No shit.

Finally, an admission that artificial intelligence might be quicker than human reaction. Perhaps, like Superman, able to ‘leap tall buildings, and faster than a speeding bullet.’

If there is to be an international indictment for ‘War Crimes,’ the United States must be included as a ‘co-conspirator.’ Certainly (although it’s very controversial in the case of Israel). In a court of law, the entity that provides the weapon in a murder case is as guilty as the person (or entity) that fires it.

That might be the case in companies such as Palantir, that provide AI software for just those purposes.

As an example, it is supposed that Palantir (a company that contracts with the Pentagon), was responsible for the girl’s school deaths in an early Iranian bombing by America, because the maps that showed the building was no longer in military use were not upgraded.

A small software mistake, but major problem for the 175 girls who died.

In the unprovoked attack on Iran by Israel (supported by US military hardware), they apparently used their own systems:

• Lavender (which identifies people,

• The Gospel (identifying locations), and

• Where’s Daddy? (which monitors movements of selected individuals).

It’s good to have an active sense of humor when naming the tools of death.

Such a comfort to know that ‘Where’s Daddy’ exterminated your father, along with whoever else was accompanying him home from the theater or grocery shop, maybe your two sisters and/or mother at his side.

According to my sources, during the June 2025 strikes on Iran (Operation Rising Lion, another name for the ages), Israel attacked nuclear facilities, missile sites, senior IRGC commanders, and scientists in a highly coordinated operation that also involved Mossad teams and drones already positioned inside Iran.

Public reportingfails to emphasize (because why would it?) extensive intelligence preparation and covert operations, nor does it identify which AI targeting software, if any, selected those targets.

Even so, defense analysts believe AI-assisted intelligence almost certainly played a role because the operation required the rapid integration of satellite imagery, signals intelligence, intercepted communications, drone surveillance, and human intelligence.

AI is about the only way to fuse these sources and prioritize targets.

(Guardian UK) Israeli Command System Identified 850,000 Targets in Gaza and Lebanon Wars, Says Supplier. In the gobbledygook department, the article further states that

• “an Elbit (the supplier of note) spokesperson denied that the 850,000 figure cited by Edelstein referred to targets, despite the slide specifying this, saying it reflected “aggregated system activity and operational data generated through the IDF’s digital army program across all operational theaters since October 7, 2023.”

Well, I guess that’s comforting for the victims to know.

• “The spokesperson added that it demonstrated the volume of information being processed by the Israeli military: “The figures represent system activity and operational data, rather than the number of enemy targets or actual strikes.”

• “Bryant said it was impossible for soldiers in any military to adequately assess each piece of information to conclude if the threat was real and the target legal at the volumes indicated.

• “I will say, definitively, that there is no way each and every one of the 1,000 targets a day – let alone 850,000 targets in aggregate – are thoroughly and effectively characterised in terms of collateral damage analysis and assessed risk to civilian populations. Even characterising 50 a day is hard enough (but possible),” the former US military officer said.

Cartoon character, POGO, told us decades ago that “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Thank you, cartoonist Walt Kelly for that observation, decades before its time…

As Mark Twain was fond of saying,

“History does not always repeat, but it rhymes”

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Another cloudless morning in Prague, recovering as best we can from yet another car breakdown on the way to our tiny summer house, having my morning coffee and browsing the headlines.

• Trump Threatens to Expand Strikes on Iran’s Civilian Infrastructure, so says my Guardian UK headline. “US president says he will knock out all power plants and bridges in effort to force Tehran to agree to deal amid impasse over strait.” Apparently, in his unprovoked and unnecessary war in Iran, our man in the Oval Office plans to follow Israel’s model of killing civilians.

• Meta used AI to tag workers who took leave to be laid off, lawsuit claims. Over in the ‘child runs a company, department’ (a growing list of billionaire kids running conglomerates), Zuckerberg, who is hip-deep in the AI race, is accused of using it for what everyone fears.

• I investigated Palantir’s foothold in the British state – and what I found should worry us all. “Paid-for political access and threadbare regulations have helped to em…

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Chinese electric cars have been frozen out of the American market, although BYD, a major Chinese manufacturer, remains one of the largest installed fleets of electric buses in America. That’s mostly because it hit the market early and assembled buses at its Lancaster, California plant.

It’s now become common knowledge that electric vehicles are way cheaper to run, and that benefit can only increase as we install a larger and more convenient charging network. I hope that will happen within existing gas stations, because they are everywhere and charging fees will soften the blow of less petrol and Diesel customers.

Whattaya bet we’re too dumb and self-serving to do that?

But I’m reminded that the first Japanese passenger cars arrived in the United States in 1957, and commercial sales began in 1958. I was 22 years old at the time, working summers at home from university as a Ford salesman, and the talk around the dealership was that the Japanese cars were junk and would never compete.

Yeah, I guess.

They also said a punk college kid on the sales floor was a joke, and I was top salesman all three months, so go figure.

In 2025, the six major Japanese manufacturers—Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, and Mitsubishi, sold over six million vehicles in the United States, which works out to approximately 37% of the market. But how they got there (Toyota is now the world’s largest carmaker) is largely due to the fact that Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, and Mazda manufacture millions of vehicles in American factories.

Japanese automakers went from pretty much zero market share in 1957, to 10% by the mid-1970s, 20% by the early 1980s, and more than a third of the American market today.

And what does that say about the future of Chinese electric cars and trucks?

It pretty much proves that early moves to keep our national brands alive is fraught with problems:

• Chinese automakers are already vastly larger industrially than Japan’s were when they began entering the U.S. market. It’s only tariffs and legal barriers currently keeping them out.

• Cost advantage. Engineers who tore down a BYD Seal estimated it had a roughly 25% cost advantage over comparable European and North American EVs and about a 15% advantage over Tesla’s China-made Model 3.

• In markets where BYD competes directly without U.S.-style tariffs, its cars are generally cheaper than comparable Japanese and Korean electric cars.

• Exact numbers in Europe vary significantly by country and incentives, but a rough comparison lists the Hyundai Kona Electric at roughly €40,000–€47,000 depending on market, while the comparable BYD Dolphin Surf ranges from about €27,000 to €31,000 before local discounts and incentives.

With those trends in place, methinks Chinese vehicles are as unstoppable in the US as Japanese cars were a half-century ago.

Which finally addresses my prediction concerning Ford and General Motors (Chrysler is already dead in its tracks over at Stellantis).

The backstory is that Chrysler tried to save itself every which way, even failing when bought by Mercedes. American brands are simply too expensive to build under American wage rates.

Certain models of Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW, Mini, Volvo, Renault, Citroen, and Peugeot, all of which are historically European brands, now have substantial Chinese ownership or manufacturing.

It’s time (or perhaps long past time) for the Ford and GM brands to follow suit.

Keep the brands, and the designs, we’re pretty good at that, at least in the American market. So keep the badging and, most importantly, the dealership networks.

Dealers would be delighted to survive within a 10% profit margin, when comparing that to going out of business.

And, going out of business is the alternative.

Japan was the preview, and going out of business is the main attraction in this coming movie.

So says the onetime Ford Salesman of the Month…

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The interesting thing about tsunamis is that they are occasionally more destructive on their way back out. They sometimes scour away foundations, roads, railways, and bridges, dragging cars, boats, trees, debris, and stock investments out to sea.

A proper tsunami on Wall Street can pull investors into their current, making escape nearly impossible, drowning beaches of relaxation and harbors of safety, and sometimes causing severe long-term poverty.

On average, every four or five years we have flooded basements, stock-market wise, while in 1939 and 2008 a financial tsunami hit.

A New York Times article headlines “A $3.2 Trillion Deal-Making Frenzy Is Spurred by the A.I. Economy,” on the same day that a San Francisco real estate investor gushes that selling his home for a $million over asking price, allows him to “be a part of the excitement of the companies going public.”

When markets run on excitement and stocks sell for 300 times earnings, it’s time to pull a ‘Warren Buffett,’ and get heavy on cash for the coming (dare I say it?) tsunami.

In the cheap seats occupied by we common folks, several flashing lights are worth a look;

• Mortgage debt remains the largest obligation. Most homeowners locked in low fixed rates before interest rates rose, which has prevented a housing crisis similar to 2008. However, mortgage delinquencies have begun rising, particularly in lower-income areas and places where home prices have weakened.

• Credit-card debt is near record levels at roughly $1.3 trillion, and it carries the highest interest rates of any common household debt. Serious delinquency rates remain elevated, iand many households are struggling to keep up with payments.

• Auto loans total about $1.67 trillion. While balances continue to grow modestly, many borrowers face higher monthly payments because vehicle prices and financing costs remain elevated.

• Student loans have become one of the largest categories of household debt. About 42.6 million Americans owe federal student loans.

• Outstanding federal student debt is approximately $1.7 trillion, with total student debt (including private loans) approaching $1.85 trillion.

The troubling part is repayment. Roughly 9 million borrowers are already in default, and millions more are delinquent or in forbearance.

Collections, wage garnishment, and tax refund offsets have resumed for many borrowers after pandemic-era relief ended. Of recent graduates, aged 22 to 27, approximately 42.5% are underemployed, the highest level since the pandemic and comparable to levels seen during the Great Recession.

That means nearly one out of every two new graduates, still owing an average $29-30,000, is working in jobs such as retail sales, food service, barista, administrative support, customer service, delivery, or other positions that generally do not require a bachelor’s degree.

Taken together, these debt categories paint a picture of two Americas:

• The upper half owns appreciating assets, holds low-rate mortgages, has retirement savings, and benefits from rising stock markets.

• The lower half, carries high-interest credit-card balances, faces expensive auto payments, owes student loans, may resort to payday lenders or similar short-term credit during emergencies, and has little or no emergency savings.

• Nearly 100 million American adults lack enough readily available cash to absorb even a $500 unexpected expense without borrowing, selling something, or otherwise going into debt.

Do you think Bezos or Musk even realize that?

That divide matters because consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of U.S. GDP (gross domestic product; the total market value of goods and services produced by workers and capital) in a calendar year. If enough households come under financial pressure at the same time, the effects can spread through the broader economy.

And, by the bye, in less than ten years, the interest alone on the American national debt will amount to more than our total GDP. To put that in perspective, it’s as though the monthly interest on your credit card was equal to your salary.

Very few Americans, other than those affected, are aware of these financial disabilities among enormous numbers of those living just down the block.

There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

-Will Rogers, American humorist in the 1930s

The billionaire class I keep raging about never had to pee on that fence, but tens of thousands of employees at Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Starbucks have had the experience, if they were given time off to pee at all.

It’s not an accident that the world’s wealthiest people, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Brin, Altman, Adelson, Murdoch, and Cook, attended multiple inauguration morning events, including standing closer to Trump at the actual swearing-in than his family.

These are, essentially, the owners of America, having bought the Supreme Court, the US Congress, and the presidency.

One widely cited analysis found that four of the most prominent technology billionaires—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jensen Huang—collectively increased their net worth by approximately $288 billion during the first year of President Trump’s second term.

That, in case such numbers are beyond your understanding (as they are mine), is 288 thousand million dollars…to four men in a single year, and that was just the additional iceing on their cake.

Holding about seven credit cards, the average Joe’s wages held either steady or flat. A favorite economist of mine had a word or two to say about widening gaps in the nation’s economic disparity:

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.

-John Kenneth Galbraith (Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official and intellectual).

The billionaire class is not only wrong at this time in American history, it’s wrong at the top of its lungs.

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Time was, in my 35-year career as a landscape architect, when I enjoyed the newspaper, read at my leisure at a 6:30 breakfast before getting out to visit various sites. Denny’s was my restaurant of choice, the food was good, the waitresses smiling and the coffee always fresh.

At 91, retired here in Prague, it’s mostly only coffee I make myself, and the news appears on my monitor, a monkey-puzzle of disasters of the day. The media thrust today rewards clicks above all else, and children dead in a military attack gone wrong reliably gets views than a rogue president robbing the public coffers.

So, a friend in Chicago wrecked my morning by sending a headline from The Hill, a political website, reportedly read by the White House and more lawmakers than any other site. Admittedly, ‘read by the White House’ doesn’t mean what it once did, not all that long ago.

America Is Already Locking Up Toothpaste, and the Mass Layoffs Have Barely Started.

Grabbed (as I was supposed to be) by what toothpaste could possibly have to do with layoffs, I read further (as I was supposed to do). I found myself unsettled (as I often am).

It seems an Uber driver in Kansas City had spilled his life story on the journalist reporting the incident. Turns out he had just added his girlfriend’s mother and a friend to his already crowded household, because there was too much month left at the end of the money.

Sharing that dilemma (without the mother and friend), I read on (as I was supposed to do).

I may be short of both readers and money but, by god, I follow the rules.

The Uber guy drives people for a living, one of about 1.6 million rideshare drivers in the U.S. Apparently, America has over four million driver individuals, including long-haul trucks, local delivery, ride-hail/taxi, city bus, school bus, postal, and courier drivers.

Wow.

That’s a bunch of people driving for a a living, supporting families and trying to get along…

…and they all have one thing in common.

They’re jobs are ‘passing away,’ which is the same euphemism we’ve invented for death, just so it won’t sound so brutal and unavoidable.

• (The Hill) “The same week I was there, PepsiCo announced the largest deployment of fully autonomous delivery trucks in American history — a $600 million investment, partnering with Gatik AI. Medium-duty Isuzu trucks, many carrying Doritos and Frito-Lay products, have been running with no human on board since June 2025 on fixed short-haul routes between distribution centers, bottling plants, and stores like Walmart and Dollar General. The fleet has logged zero accidents and a 99 percent on-time delivery rate.”

No kidding, I thought all that driverless stuff was experimental, and a long way down the pipeline.

• “PepsiCo is not just experimenting. Gatik, Isuzu, and Nvidia are developing a production facility in South Carolina that will begin mass-producing Level 4 autonomous trucks in the second half of 2027. “The volumes that we’re looking at for this year are in the hundreds of trucks,” said Gatik’s CEO.”

THE HILL article draws several conclusions that seem off-the-wall to me, but who really knows what’s click bait and what’s honest reporting in this day, when the former is way more prevalent than the latter?

• “And into this landscape, add a statistic that deserves far more attention than it gets: 32 percent of all U.S. adults personally own a gun — roughly 83 million people. Ownership is highest in rural areas, skewing toward men without college degrees — the exact demographic most exposed to automation displacement. 47 percent of rural adults own a gun, compared to just 20 percent of urban adults.”

Yeah? And The Hill sees a connection, or are they just click-bailing me?

• “Here is the compound risk nobody in Washington is connecting: Millions of working-class Americans — truckers, drivers, delivery workers — are watching their livelihoods get automated away. They are moving in together to survive. And they live in a country with more guns than people, inside a legal system that, in many states, effectively decriminalizes retail theft below certain dollar thresholds.

Decriminalizing shoplifting, so formerly honest people can make ends meet? Not to cop a pun, but “the means hardly meet the problem.”

• “Walk into any CVS or Walgreens in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York today. Between 2019 and 2023, 69 percent of American retailers increased their use of merchandise-locking cages. In 2024, 20 percent of retailers closed store locations entirely in response to retail theft.”

Ah, the toothpaste connection, just when I’d almost lost interest.

• “When institutions fail to protect the social contract, people find their own enforcement mechanisms. That is not commentary — that is history.

  “I (The Hill journalist) am not writing this as alarm.

Pardon me, while I reheat my coffee-gone-cold, but it seemed a bit alarming.

• “I am writing this as pattern recognition. Every society that has experienced rapid technological displacement without a parallel investment in retraining, safety nets, and civic trust has paid a price. Sometimes that price comes in the form of elections. Sometimes it comes in the form of something harder to reverse.”

Thanks to my friend from Chicago for sending this, but I have questions when I see the billionaire class chopping up jobs.

Does Jeff Bezos over at Amazon think those ‘money-saving automatons’ are going to leave any customers behind? Or have he and his buddies just chopped 40 million shoppers (when you count their various dependents) off the books?

Did Wal-Mart just commit the same error in judging customer loss, or do they simply not give a shit?

These billionaire owners of America don’t live off earnings, their wealth is connected to stock market growth.

What happens when both the market and the customer base fail at the same time?

Probably, no one can afford Elon’s household robots, Jeff’s or Walton’s everything else, or even have a place left to go to work when the walls come a tumbling down.

Is there a plan for that?

Just asking…

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To quote Winston Churchill once again, “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”

And so it is with our panicked run to build datacenters, no matter the cost. A recent article in the Guardian-UK headlines that “Large-scale datacentre projects around the world are being challenged or cancelled, as infrastructure’s energy demands ramp up.”

No doubt of that, as hundreds of datacenters (the preferred American spelling) all chase the golden ring on A merry-go-round that accommodates only one or two winners.

Why?

• Too much water required,

• too much electricity,

• too much land, in areas where

• too many object, and

• way, way, way too much money,

• all wagered on a bet without a definitive outcome.

It’s the American way.

Time-tested in the boiling cauldrons of the Las Vegas mirror image we call Wall Street, where every four or five years, on average, we avail ourselves of a financial reckoning. Thus, we boldly move where no man has gone before.

Wow, that’s enough to make Winston swallow his famous cigar.

My sources tell me that the major players; Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and others—are expected to move nearly $600–700 billion in capital expenditures across the Black-Jack table this year alone, with the majority going to pay for infrastructure, servers, networking equipment, and data centers. Not all of this gamble is in the United States. Monte Carlo has its head in the trough across Europe as well.

Goldman Sachs, who is no stranger to financial disasters (having once bankrupted Greece), estimates that those with sufficient credit at the Vegas gambling tables will pony up about $5.3 trillion in AI chips through 2030.

Wise (or unwise) heads with credible (or incredible) projections, suggest the eventual American buildout might well run into multiple trillions of dollars by 2030. Multiple, means a number of Elon Musk type players are going to have to agree to spin the wheel, and see if red or black comes up.

Interestingly, these dudes may be laying down their bets on one of the largest private-sector infrastructure gambles in history.

I must admit, at my advanced age and experience, I’ve often wondered what the billionaire class would find interesting to do with their mega-bucks, once they’d tired of Bentleys, private jets, multiple mansions on multiple continents, and Yachts.

The answer seems to be, plunking down their chips (or the promise of chips) at a scale equal to the interstate highway system, the postwar suburban buildout, or the development of the national electrical grid.

Each of those, for better or worse, gave us roads to drive on (between fast-food interchanges), housing on flat ground instead of high-rise cities, and a national electric grid (that mostly didn’t burn down anything but California).

Unlike those earlier projects, much of this AI gamble is being bought and paid for (now that they own Congress) by a handful of private investors, whose ultimate return on that investment remains uncertain.

Will the gathering all of human knowledge for free, except for its infrastructure costs, and selling what was once free to us for money, actually indicate a solid business plan?

The answer to that may be that you and I are not the target market, we’re already too broke from being turned from a producer to a consumer generation.

The big bucks will become available from the Military and what has come to be known in these circles as ‘keeping-an-eye-on-the-public,’ which means you and me being surveilled, and watched over by your friendly, masked, ICE agent.

Meanwhile, what is China up to in the AI race?

As you might expect, because of some of the perks that come with being a dictatorship, you won’t find them rolling dice at the gambling tables. Where they are rolling, because of that dictatorial circumstance is;

• China’s underwater data center program. In May 2026, a 24 megawatt facility began operating off the coast of Shanghai. The servers are submerged offshore, where seawater provides natural cooling, and the facility is powered by a nearby offshore wind farm.

• Chinese authorities say the design uses 20% less electricity than comparable land-based facilities, and no fresh water required.

• China currently consumes roughly 10,000 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than twice U.S. electricity generation.

• It’s also adding enormous quantities of new electrical generation, transmission, battery storage, solar, wind, nuclear, and coal capacity.

All of these are areas where America is lagging, because we are a market based economy and capitalism, in its current construct, is sucking all the oxygen from the projects by tax cuts aimed at billionaires.

The United States has plenty of technological solutions to these problems. The difference between the US and China is primarily planning, approvals, and coordination.

China can say, we have electricity here. We have water here. We have wind and solar here. We have transmission capacity here. Therefore, this is where we will build our artificial intelligence infrastructure.

So, the data-center race may ultimately be less about who has the best AI models and more about which country can produce enormous quantities of reliable electricity cheaply enough to run them.

Which raises the next logical question of how do China’s electricity-generation and grid-expansion programs compare with America’s ability to supply power to the trillion-dollar AI data-center buildout?

The answer probably lies in the fact that China has spent the past two decades building far more electrical infrastructure than any other nation in the world.

It’s now the world’s largest producer of electricity, builder of power plants, installer of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and high-voltage transmission lines.

Need I remind you that dictatorships don’t have to pander to their interior markets, only those that affect foreign trade. Nor do they have to jump bureaucratic barriers, because there are none. China faces no four-year-term presidencies, allowing them to look far down historic roads, and act accordingly.

If that taints my opinions, cut me some slack. I’ve been watching China ever since President Nixon and Henry Kissinger went down there in 1972 and opened China to membership in the World trade Organization. That’s 54 years ago, and I was 37 at the time.

World commerce hasn’t been the same since.

Books could be written on that subject, and many have been.

Getting back to AI generation, China builds transmission before it’s needed, as well as constructing the world’s largest network of ultra-high-voltage transmission lines. These operate at enormous capacity and can move huge amounts of electricity over more than 1,000 miles with relatively low voltage losses.

The US has comparatively few viable long-distance transmission projects because each line typically requires approvals from multiple states, utilities, landowners, and regulators. The entire state of Texas continues to operate under both brownouts and electricity failures.

China supports planning that co-locates AI with power.

Rather than asking where should we put a power plant, China has the political power to ask, where is the electricity already available?

So, it locates AI facilities near massive hydroelectric projects, large windpower bases, solar installations, and existing transmission hubs, while the data moves over fiber-optic cables, so the electricity doesn’t have to travel nearly as far.

Many analysts now argue that the AI race is becoming an energy race.

Developing the next generation of AI models will depend not only on better chips from companies like NVIDIA, but also on who can reliably provide hundreds of gigawatts of electricity, expanding transmission capabilities, and cooling increasingly power-hungry computing clusters.

In that sense, AI is no longer just a software competition, it’s becoming a race in industrial capacity, such as electric generation, grid expansion, construction, and engineering. All those areas, you might recall, are where America shipped off its industrial capacity to ‘guess who?’

If trillions of dollars are being committed (or planned) for investment, it certainly isn’t going to be in China.

By the way, China does not currently have an operational space-based solar power station producing electricity for Earth. However, it expects to have one by 2030, about the same time Elon and the boys need to come up with another $5.3 trillion or so.

Just thought you’d want to know.

Sleep well, your billionaires are all working in your (or someone’s) best interests…

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The coming (and coming soon) future of AI is as a tool.

Tools are a useful thing, hard to fix the kitchen sink or build a house without them. My 31 year old Subaru is much loved by my Bulgarian mechanic, because he can work on it, rather than simply replace computer chips.

Even so, a tool is no better than the skills of those who use it.

It doesn’t take much skill to use your cel-phone, and yet I’m told it contains more power within a thin slab that fits in your hand, than the rooms of computers that sent men to the moon. Put that in perspective:

• Clock speed: A modern phone runs roughly 100,000 times faster than the Apollo computer,

• Memory: Your phone has millions of times more RAM,

• Storage: Thousands to millions of times greater,

• Overall computing performance: Depending on how it’s measured, a modern smartphone is hundreds of thousands to millions of times more powerful than the computer that guided the astronauts to the Moon.

Even so, although the smartphone in your pocket contains vastly more computing power, the Moon landing didn’t depend solely upon powerful computers—it was achieved by an extraordinary group of engineers.

If there’s a lesson there, it’s that tools don’t do anything useful without talented craftsmen.

My father is an excellent example. Working in the woodshop at Douglas Aircraft, building DC-3s during the 2^nd World War, made him a master woodworker, and he went on to create some amazing furniture as a hobby later on in his life. I am his son and, eighty years later, I can (sometimes) drive a nail into a board without bending it.

No matter how hard I might wish it, my cel-phone will not send a rocket to the moon.

Unfortunately, there is a cautionary tale. We now have some very skilled tech guys (not to leave out the women) mis-handling AI.

The charge of misuse is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, but a hell of a lot being done today is as far behind rational inspection as the Wizard of OZ’s dark curtain. Here are a few examples, provided to me by (what else?) artificial intelligence itself:

• Palantir Technologies; intelligence, military, policing, data integration, surveillance, predictive policing, military targeting, and immigration enforcement,

• Anduril Industries; autonomous weapons, border surveillance, AI-enabled warfare, and autonomous defense systems,

• Clearview AI; facial recognition by scraping billions of online photos without consent,

• NSO Group; Governments’ use of spyware against journalists, activists, and political opponents,

• HawkEye 360; radio-frequency geolocation intelligence, military and intelligence applications,

• Maxar Technologies; satellite imagery analysis, military intelligence and battlefield support,

• Planet Labs; Earth observation AI, military and intelligence customers alongside civilian uses,

• Dataminr; real-time event detection from public data, government surveillance, monitoring of protests,

• Cognyte; communications intelligence, selling to governments accused of human rights abuses, and (drum-roll please)

• Verint Intelligence analytics; Mass surveillance technologies.

Palantir, and Peter Thiel (its founder) is what originally got my blood up, and now I find AI surveillancet ools are blooming like spring flowers in a field.

The next time you attend a demonstration against this or that troublesome piece of government interference in public life, perhaps like ICE agents bundling off immigrants without due process. Consider the fact that you may be tagged by image analysis, and stored away for further future prosecution.

What?

Here in America?

Not the America you and I remember from just a few years back, but the New-and-Improved version that deep-cleans your personal information without detergent overuse. This one rinses clean-as-a-whistle, and always dries softly against your skin.

If that doesn’t raise a few hairs along the back of your neck, you’re not paying attention.

I was not paying proper attention either, until our government put masked hooligan ICE agents on our city streets, kidnapped innocent college kids, made a night-raid on Venezuela to whisk the president and his wife off to an American prison, and made it a hat-trick by a surprise and unprovoked attack on Iran.

These are not ordinary events.

Extraordinary events are unusual and, in my 91 years of casual observation, do not come in clusters, like Caramel-Corn at a County Fair.

This is not a presidency, administration, Supreme Court, or Congress, , that I recognize. Not to mention its refusal to respect law-and-order, our guiding principle.

So, I thought you might like to witness Artificial Intelligence in its New and Improved form, not as a possible threat to your employment, but as a threat to the integrity of the very nation you just honored on its 250^th birthday.

Dig a bit on your own and let me know what you find.

I’m always eager to hear what my readers think, and open a conversation.

Sleep well…

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Those were the words of Benjamin Franklin, in answer to a lady’s query of “What kind of government have you given us, Mr. Franklin.”

The date was 1787 and the place, the Grand Convention at Philadelphia. Most delegates did not arrive intending to draft a new constitution. Many assumed that the convention’s purpose was to discuss and draft improvements to the existing Articles of Confederation, and would not have agreed to participate otherwise.

You see, those Founders we are so fond of quoting did not give us a nation where all men are created equal. Slaveowners at the time, they gave us the promise of such a nation, and it has been a battle every step of the way since, to keep that promise alive.

We will keep it, Mr. Franklin, because it is too valuable to lose.

Yet, in all my 91 years of observation, I have never seen us so politically torn, so set against one another in what seems to be an existential confrontation. The last hundred of those 250 years have not been easy

The Great Depres…

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This year it will be held in Ireland, somewhere near Dublin, where early foxhunting horns are not the only call to the chase. Those properly mounted for Thiel’s running-to-ground of we lesser omnivorous mammals, will don the top-hats and pink coats awarded to Masters of commerce, technology, politics and other less-known forms of social skullduggery.

Hark! I hear Thiel’s horn at this very moment, calling hounds to gather.

A word about Peter Thiel, Master of Foxhounds for this annual chase, in case you are unfamiliar.

Peter is a German-born American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political donor, who became one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley. Thus, thank god, he can never become President of the United States. But that is a private prayer, by an agnostic (hence the small g) and you need not share it.

Upon studying philosophy at Stanford University (so say my consultants) and earning a law degree there, he co-founded PayPal in 1998, thus pioneering digital payments…

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Anyone who doesn’t understand that the Chuck Schumer days of Democratic leadership (if it can even be called that) are over, simply hasn’t been paying attention.

There is a new sheriff in town, and his name is Socialist Sam.

But first, we need to discuss what happened to make law and order so distasteful over at the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Pay attention now, it’s not the election of Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York, it’s the full half century of the DNC abandoning those it once supported.

Remember Trade Unions? Do you have any vague recollection of support for the regulation of big business, a robust welfare state, natural skepticism toward concentrated wealth, and willingness to use government to reduce inequality. Those were once major tenets of what it meant to be a Democrat.

The Democratic Party of today is timidly fiddling around with what are described as WOKE causes, having abandoned-ship on its core values.

Voters today might not be able to put a name to many of the values Democrats once held, but they feel their loss. Republicans didn’t get us where we are today all by themselves, they had Democratic co-conspirators every step of the way.

If I had to characterize both parties, Republicans, would be Fred Astair to the Democrats Ginger Rogers. Ginger was once quoted as “doing every step Fred did, backwards, in high heels.”

• Bill Clinton championed the North American Free Trade Agreement despite strong opposition from organized labor,

• Clinton joined Republicans in repealing key parts of the Glass–Steagall Act through the Financial Services Modernization Act, as well as legislation limiting the regulation of derivatives, both of which enriched billionaires and set the stage for the 2008 financial crisis,

• Good ol’ Bill “ended welfare as we know it,” approving the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, imposing work requirements and time limits on federal welfare benefits, abandoning the FDR’s commitment to protecting the poor,

• Beginning in the 1980s and accelerating in the 1990s, Democratic fundraising increasingly favored billionaire donors rather than labor unions.

• Democrats essentially abandoned traditional New Deal values in the 1990s, when the party embraced free trade, financial deregulation, welfare reform, deficit reduction, and a more business-friendly philosophy, standing by saluting, as our industry-based Middle Class got sent off to China, for profit.

Those new-and-improved Democrats sure had learned to dance, following Republicans step-by-step, backwards, in high heels.

We Americans, who used to have two, now have three voter blocs, Democrat, Republican and Undecided. Let’s take a look at how those percentages have changed since 1990.

The short answer is that Democrats (35% to 27%) dropped eight percentage points, while Republicans (33% to 28%) lost five points, and Independents (33% to 45%) gained what both had lost.

But the move from party affiliation to fuck-them-both is significant. In a situation where Congress no longer gets anything done, and money now rules both parties, thank-you-we-hate-you-all is now our largest voting group.

Really?

Yep, which explains an apparent paradox, party identification has weakened, but electoral polarization has intensified, essentially ‘we don’t much like Ted Cruz, but we hate Chuck Schumer even more.”

And so?

That, as much as anything, probably suggests the reasons behind Zohran Mamdani’s astonishing popularity in New York and the rise of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). Its rise is one of the most significant developments inside the Democratic coalition over the past decade and, although the movement remains relatively small, it has become disproportionately influential in Democratic primaries, especially in large cities.

Unlike their parents, many younger voters entered adulthood facing enormous student debt, stagnant wages, soaring housing costs that had them living back in their childhood bedrooms, along with unaffordable health insurance.

America sheltered a long-term dislike of the term, but Bernie Sanders made ‘socialism’ respectable again.

Before 2016, calling yourself a socialist was generally considered political suicide in America. But then Bernie ran for president and, for the first time, millions of younger Americans heard proposals such as Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, stronger labor unions, wealth taxes, and campaign finance reform.

Bernie is the first (and only ever) socialist member of the Senate, although he caucuses with Democrats.

By all primary results, Sanders had won the Democratic nomination. But, in a weird move that only Democrats could pull off, the Democratic National Committee decided it was ‘Hillary’s turn,’ and decided upon her as its candidate. That was a step back to the old days when candidates were selected in the back rooms of conventions, and the very reason we decided to have primaries. Sorry Bernie…

Hillary lost the election that couldn’t be lost, and we lost the man who (I feel) would have, and should have, sent Donald Trump back to his New York business crimes.

But Democratic Socialists of America membership exploded after Sanders’ campaign.

Why it matters.

It matters because, even after breaking with the electorate it formerly represented, the Democratic Party still matters.

Wounded as it was, certain signs of life include

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeating longtime Congressman Joe Crowley in 2018,

• Rashida Tlaib becoming one of the first openly DSA-affiliated members of Congress,

• Zohran Mamdani winning New York City while backed by DSA, and

• growing successes on city councils in Chicago, New York, Seattle, and other major cities.

Even this week, DSA-backed candidates continued to defeat long-serving Democratic incumbents in some safe Democratic districts. Compared with mainstream Democrats, DSA generally advocates

• universal health care,

• much stronger labor unions,

• public or nonprofit housing expansion,

• higher taxes on wealth,

• expanded public ownership in some sectors,

• free or low-cost public higher education, and

• much larger social welfare programs.

In other words, all their former core values.

Generally (and finally) GSA are more skeptical of corporate power and capitalism than mainstream Democrats, which is where perception and reality probably differs.

The DSA has never controlled the Democratic Party, but has become an energetic faction within it, much as the conservative movement reshaped the Republican Party over several decades. Logically many Democrats came to understand the party had sold itself off to corporate centrism during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Thus, the DSA represents an attempt to reclaim an older tradition associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

While critics argue that the DSA’s agenda goes well beyond New Deal liberalism, making it less electable outside heavily Democratic urban districts, supporters argue circumstances require moving forward.

In these times when only fools predict outcomes, I guess we’ll simply have to wait and see.

And yet, socialism, that political system that makes the Nordic Countries rate so high on the world’s best-places-to-live surveys, may be on the rise in America.

Let’s hope.

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