Who names their child “Barron”? It means “lord of the realm,” conjures up images of nobility.

Great. Just what we need– another Trump being groomed with an attitude and a skewed sense of entitlement.

Chart your own course, kid. Don’t listen to your old man too intently. Or at all.

Here we go again—Canadian wildfires are back, fouling the air in Minnesota, and Trump is offering up another serving of schoolyard dumbness. He calls Joe Biden a moron, and Alvin Bragg “Fat Alvin.” I’m surprised even his most ardent disciples aren’t walking away, muttering, “Come on, Donald, grow up.”

Should be quite the week in news of the slimy—Michael Cohen is gonna take the stand. Maybe he’ll hold his own and put a few more nails in Trump’s coffin.

Coronal mass ejection. CME. I learned a new term from Bill Nye yesterday. Actually, I had heard of CMEs before but had never committed the phrase to memory.

There was a very powerful CME, or maybe a series of them, that began bombarding Earth on Friday, and people were sharing amazing pictures of the Aurora Borealis from places like Boston and Sturbridge, MA, and other spots around the world that usually don’t get the opportunity to see the wondrous display. I think we might have even been able to see it here in northeast PA but there was cloud cover, and we had gone to bed anyway.

Mr. Nye explained the phenomenon as geomagnetic in nature—highly charged particles are ejected from the Sun and scream through space at over a million mph. If the earth is in their path, there is a collision with our atmosphere at latitudes closer to the poles (and further south, if the discharge is potent enough), producing the display we know as the Northern Lights.

We are lucky that the assault is repelled, to one degree or another, by earth’s atmosphere, which possesses its own highly charged magnetic field, generated by the earth’s rotation and a molten iron and nickel core. I think that’s the way The Science Guy explained it…

In any event, another reason for folks to look up. And a reminder that it’s a gift to have people like Mr. Nye around who enjoy imparting knowledge and explaining, in a non-esoteric manner, what’s going on.

Some may wonder how she got elected in the first place. Ms. Noem has never come across as stable, to me. Unflappable, maybe, but I’ve grown to see this as symptomatic of some sort of affective deficit.

She’s amazing at keeping her cool, very disciplined. It’s what comes out of her mouth, though– as she tries to control her temper and speaks in almost a monotone– that betrays some troubling tendencies and opinions.

And lately, of course, the whole shooting her dog… and goat, and 3 horses saga, along with an imagined encounter with Kim Jong Un– and the decision to include all this in her book– has placed her center stage and given people reason to wonder about a level of desperation, and maybe her sanity. All this may get one to wonder what kind of childhood she had, what influenced her worldview and caused her to take a sharp right turn into Miller speak and Trump worship.

Ambition will bite you in the ass, on occasion, but whatever Noem is trying to sell goes way deeper than ambition. It skews into wild political notions and a creepy demeanor.  

Why let Paul Manafort’s involvement in a Chinese media deal stop you? By all means, get the band back together…

It’s obvious that Trump and the rest play by their own set of rules, that they care not even a little about the rule of law, or honor or anything else. Chaos is what they enjoy sowing, and all that matters is the power and what’s in it for them.

How ugly and self-indulgent can you get? We’re finding out. The dregs are washing up on shore, and there’s still a pulse.

It’s difficult to talk about the BSA name change without coming across as provincial and old- fashioned. But my initial reaction to Scouting America is that it sounds like defeat to me.

At this point, I am wondering why an organization can’t just cater to one gender or the other and carry on without worrying about claims of exclusivity or gender bias. I guess I don’t consider this of the same genre as the history at Augusta National, which didn’t allow women until 2012. But maybe it is…

In one respect, I see this as a matter of envy—if one program offers experiences and opportunities the other doesn’t, then maybe the leadership of the other find ways to adopt and use what’s working in the former.

I’m sure the leadership of the new organization will “make it work” somehow, but I will wonder why such a move was necessary in the first place. It must have something to do with the giant lawsuits and attendant bankruptcy a few years back. Or is it just a sign of the times, purely in the name of inclusivity? A matter of evolution?

On its face, it all seems unnecessary, contrived, and even, potentially, an entrée into a whole new set of issues dealing with the birds and bees. But I’m sure they’ll figure it all out and maybe even emerge with an organizational model to be proud of.

And yes, I am provincial and old-fashioned sometimes.

Without immunity, a President can’t do his or her job.

This is of course the opinion of someone who’s running from reality and jail time.

Sorry, Donald, you can’t avoid being human, even though it looks like you’ve been trying. You may feel picked on, but look in the mirror, make time for some self-assessment. The reason it seems people are piling on is because they are. We’ve never had to deal with anyone quite like you.

And no, that’s not a compliment.

So much passes for substance when it’s really built on pillars of sand. Take the fixation on celebrity, for example. The majority of the Birthdays Today in the local paper are those of actors, entertainers.

The Met Gala just happened and the pics of all the Who’s Who are nothing if not ridiculous. Sorry, but this doesn’t rise to the level of needed diversion. It’s just shameful, gaudy, embarrassing excess and ego feeding, along with outlandishly expensive outfits that make one either laugh or cry. More self-indulgent and “look at me” than the red (or beige) carpet walk at the Oscars.

Meanwhile, the world burns and people starve. I hope there’s a good cause involved.

Here is the plight of hundreds of thousands of human beings in Gaza who don’t know which way to turn: impending famine is no longer impending, apparently. This is in part why many of the students on campuses are protesting— they’re sick of war always being the only option, they’re trying to raise awareness of the inhumanity of it all, the base inconsideration of human needs.

The saddest part is that Gaza isn’t the only place. Famine has returned to places in Africa that are suffering through yet another drought.

War sucks. Poverty sucks. Climate change and happenstance suck. People are stuck. But why are there always so many children? What kind of future are parents expecting for them?

Sorry, I can’t think of a more delicate way to ask that.

Anyone else with fewer resources would have been in jail by now. Money can buy you freedom. Just ask Donald Trump, the heartless troll, the human sea lamprey who thinks nothing of sucking the lifeblood from an entire nation just so he can reap attention and feed his cravings and avoid consequences.

There must come a moment in the collective consciousness when the scales tip, when it dawns on enough of us that Trump has been playing us, simply stringing us out, lying in the same manner that most of us breathe. Many realize this and have known it for years, but way too many still think he walks on water.

So… still a ways to go.

What the hell?!