“White House and Trump mock Canada over Team USA’s Olympic ice hockey win.”

It’s the latest headline from TIME Magazine.

Sorry, rest of the world. We appear to be suffering through a rough patch here in America, where the President and those around him continue their descent into unrivaled tone deafness and the behavior of spoiled two-year-olds. They enjoy kicking people when they’re down and, in general, acting like they’re in a really bad reality TV show– something akin to the one in which the ring leader used  to “star,” except with more dire consequences.

We’ll continue our efforts to remove this cancer from our midst, though he will make every effort to thwart such an eventuality. Pretty ugly stuff.

A heads up– don’t bother tuning in for the State of the Union address tomorrow night. You already know how that’s gonna go. He’ll be threatening somebody, spewing darkness, and spinning all the hits for his favorite voting bloc.

The Board of Peace. Sounds like an uninspired, throw-away name for something no one should take seriously.

A billion dollars to join, Donald Trump chairman for life? They have extravagant plans for a bombed-to-dust, obliterated Gaza, but do these plans include any consideration of the people who called it home? Or are they on their own, expected to settle for some other shoebox parcel of land in which to eke out an existence?

If there’s anything that symbolizes tone deafness and an amalgamation of questionable intentions, this enterprise is at the top of the list, and just one more reason to believe that Donald Trump should not be in the position he’s in. He should go back to being a self-proclaimed deal maker par excellence, in the private sector, where he’s better suited to apply his dubious “talents” and make promises he has little intention to keep.

Of course, that eventuality would open him to further indictments and criminal litigation, so… so much for that. He must figure he’s safer where he’s at, even as he tries to tear it all down.

The old man gets bent out of shape pretty easily when he doesn’t get his way. The Supreme Court decision to render invalid a significant portion of all the tariffs Trump has been unilaterally instituting really got under his skin.

A couple things happened afterwards—Trump went ballistic and later instituted more tariffs under a different statute, and opinion of the Court’s decision included a caveat of sorts: there are other high-profile decisions on the docket that have a good chance of being decided in Trump’s favor. So, who knows—maybe this one was a strategic appeasement ahead of Roberts and Co. getting back to giving the man baby what he wants.

Besides, it wasn’t all disappointment for POTUS, especially since he and the EPA were able to relax regulations on mercury emissions and slow-roll closures of 11 coal-burning plants. That oughtta keep his fossil fuel buddies happy for a while.

You’ve still got it, Donald. Twirl that moustache. Nothing like relaxed mercury regulation to bring joy and warmth to that tiny heart of yours.

To paraphrase Ham Porter, you’re killing us, Donald.

I know there is an increasing fear that at some point, we’ll look out our windows and all we’ll be able to see are data centers in any direction. Companies are gobbling up land like crazy, or trying to, and there is something about this mad rush that might have many justifiably wondering who’s going to help us with rising electricity costs, or if this whole enterprise won’t end up being the next bubble to burst.

Maybe there is some rational middle course that includes the understanding that when used properly and judiciously, in search of solutions to problems and dilemmas we face in daily life, artificial intelligence will be an amazing tool at our disposal 24/7.

The other day, Chat GPT and I worked through a problem we had here at the house. I presented a detailed explanation of what was going on, Chat took a couple of seconds to analyze and evaluate, and then offered up several informed and well-reasoned possibilities for why the door on our new shed wouldn’t open. It also gave me several possible solutions, and the first one I tried… worked.

It remains to be seen if current and future investments in the technology will be worth the astronomical costs, and if the technology won’t be co-opted by bad players– which seems almost inevitable. Still, whether we acknowledge it or not, AI is already here, and if we don’t invest, someone else likely will.

It’s funny, in an unfunny way, that in a lot of places besides here in the U.S. there are consequences for an association with Jeffrey Epstein. Prince Andrew is now arrested, others are losing their jobs or stepping down, of their own accord.

But not here, for the most part. Here in the land of the questionably free and home of the conveniently brave, it’s still all about cover-up, downplaying, and outright lying. It’s not surprising, given the whole scene here in America, with a criminal at the helm and a bunch of kowtowing sad sacks always at the ready to make his every wish their command.

Still, it’s enough to make one wonder how much longer before it all catches up with him. We should be on the lookout for the next great distraction. Such a fantastic distraction, only the best.