There are more ways than bombs and other offensive weaponry to inflict damage on a nation. China seems to be intent on wreaking havoc with cyber-attacks on our critical infrastructure, according to current reporting. This would indeed introduce panic and discomfort and anger, and violence would ensue without sending one bomb.

I can’t believe we have to think about this stuff. It makes me sound like a paranoid doomsdayer. But the efforts, according to CNN, are real and ongoing.

We better have a robust defense against such heinous behavior, better be keeping one step ahead. Besides biological or chemical warfare, cyber warfare is about as insidious as it gets. Computer technology turns out to be a mixed blessing, at best.

I wonder what Bill Gates thinks about all this—if he’s confident we can stay ahead of it, or if he recognizes that the other shoe will inevitably drop. Because to hackers, it’s like an addictive game, with the added considerations of geopolitical supremacy and national pride.

They get off on the challenge of solving riddles. Breaking things, busting through firewalls and causing chaos. I’m sure there are high fives all around.

Taylor Swift must be riding a carousel of emotions right now. She’s in a highly publicized love affair with Travis Kelce, she’s riding a wave of popularity after stratospheric successes from touring and album sales, and she’s being hailed as a savvy businesswoman operating in rarified air, beyond Beyonce-esque.

And now Fox News and the rest of Earth 2 are losing their minds over the prospect of something they appear to be absolutely paranoid about—that the fix is in for KC to win the Super Bowl, which will in turn provide Swift a platform for dropping some big announcement that will enhance Joe Biden’s chances in November.

This commentary would be hilarious, pants-on-fire stuff if it weren’t coming from the usual suspects who behave this way, to varying degrees, all the time. Their MO is apparent—simply start saying sensational stuff and fan the flames, double down, report it like it’s news, like something verifiable and real. Then hope people start believing it.

Of course, Swift needs to play this coolly, because if she lets all this attention go to her head and does indeed decide to play some overt political role, the alternate universe will unleash an unholy retribution campaign and go after her relentlessly (sounds like that’s what they’re gonna do anyway). Then, what already promises to be an unbearably ugly election season will morph into a juggernaut of mudslinging misery, and we’ll all be begging for it to stop.

And, unless Travis is truly committed, Taylor might end up alone again, with material for her next unlucky-in-love mega hit.  

According to Mike Johnson, the immigration deal is absolutely dead.

The assumption can be made that if this was on the docket in a non-election year, it might not be dead. But since Donald Trump elbowed his way into the conversation and wants immigration to be an issue on which he gets to pontificate with his pants-on-fire, 4th-grade insights, the deal is going nowhere.

Gotta give Trump what he wants, and Joe Biden can’t have anything to crow about ahead of November. It’s baldfaced ugly politics at its best, i.e worst, and the immigration issue will linger, unaddressed until after November, when, God forbid, a Trump administration would open detention centers and send thousands of migrants, including some who have been here for a while, packing.

Just another of a million reasons why Trump can’t happen again.

The level of obeisance here is stunning. Trump, tragically, is Republicans’ ticket to power– nothing more. So noses are held, concessions are made, and souls must be sold.

I’m happy for E. Jean Carroll, if for no other reason than she and her intrepid and inseparable lawyers prevailed over Donald Trump and hit him where it hurts. And if he’s not careful, can’t refrain from further defamatory outbursts, he could be a real cash cow, the gift that keeps on giving.

On the other hand, I’m growing tired of listening to Carroll and watching as she does a bit of gloating of her own, flanked at all times by her lawyers, who are there to… what, make sure she doesn’t say anything that could be construed as defamatory in its own right? She seems to be coming pretty close, maybe, even if what she’s saying is of a more cathartic nature.

So, maybe nothing to watch for, but sometimes it seems like she’s running up against the edge herself and might want to be careful Trump doesn’t resort to what he does best– bring a suit of his own and try to recover or at least tie up some of the funds he’s hemorrhaging.

We shouldn’t be surprised if, as a nation, we are viewed around the world as childish and ridiculous when it comes to politics of late. And by “of late,” I mean the last 8 or 9 years, probably longer.

If the world has been looking to us as a beacon of liberty and sanity during this time, it has likely been disillusioned, finding instead a nation that in 2016 elected a buffoon to its highest office, and with prospects of doing the same thing with the same person again this year!

We are a nation at war with itself, struggling to define itself, licking old wounds.

Even as there are legitimate public servants trying to do their jobs, there are powerful players in the media and foreign adversaries hellbent on perpetuating a ruse, making sure the ones who get outsized attention are the misfit toys, the loudmouths, the jaded children clamoring to get on a train headed out into a desert full of tumbleweed and Gila monsters, the ones on some mission to fuel a myopic beeline back to “simpler times,” i.e. when white people ruled, and Christianity had a vibrant, steepled presence on every corner.

How else to explain a Republican Party that spends so little time working on substantive legislation and considers Democrats the enemy, while pouring all its energies into baseless, politically motivated efforts to impeach the Homeland Security Chief, and the President!

This is the example the rest of the world sees: children at play, preoccupied with overtly vengeful efforts to distract from the sad reality of a party bereft of a sense of direction, a party without substance, splintered by a faction who dares call itself the “Freedom” Caucus. Motivated in no small part by fear and self-interest, spooked by ogres and apparitions. A dark, unwelcoming conservatism bogged down by ignorance masquerading as patriotism, and religious faith that has lost its way.

Of course, America is not without other voices, more rational and equally insistent on being heard. One might harbor enough optimism to dare believe that these will carry the day, but not without a slog through the mud first.

Watched Man Of The Year last night, had never seen it. Came out in ’06. Somewhat prescient, regarding what we see today and what has been going on for a while now, in terms of red and blue labelism, if that’s a word, not to mention the whole voting machine kerfuffle.

Once again, the story is about a candidate who shakes things up, who uses his comedic chops in combination with a serious take on issues to garner a following. Without rehashing too much, a computer/election machine glitch– something its makers are aware of but which is ignored in the interest of garnering serious profits for the company– has him winning the national election for POTUS, even though he really didn’t.

Before this truth is revealed, this Independent candidate gets to unload on special interests and the skewed influence of big oil and pharma and the rest of the usual suspects who donate megabucks to campaigns and who expect a quid pro quo, a candidate who is beholden to them or at least is expected to give special consideration when it comes to friendly legislation, etc.

Good story, and it gave Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, Laura Linney, and even Lewis Black a chance to shine. Seems like a good one to rewatch sometime in the coming days and months, if for no other reason than that it tries to drive home the point about representatives in Congress being distracted from actually representing the people of their districts, and instead being in somebody’s pocket, whether it’s the NRA or Exxon or name-the-pharmaceutical-behemoth.

It also may add fuel for the current batch of deniers who think voting machines are near the top of the enemies list…

Lots of threads to pull, I guess. But hey, it’s only a movie.

We’ve had to learn to live with absurdity the way we live with night and day, or changes in temperature and seasons—stuff that’s just with us as part of our experience of life.

Of course the normalized absurdity is the ongoing scourge known as Donald Trump. Yesterday he was hit with an $83.3 million verdict in the latest E. Jean Carroll defamation case, just another penalty he’ll blow off and delay paying with an appeal, but also another reminder of who the leading Republican candidate for POTUS is.

We as a nation have had to suspend reality for the past 8 years—including the four he was out of office!—because he is a child who cries inside and lashes out when things aren’t going his way, and he insists on having a seat at any table where the lights are glaring and cameras are rolling.

How has he managed to stay relevant and in the good graces of his supporters all this time? Well, the media are still only too happy to cover him, his supporters double down in support of his complaints about witch hunts and disgraces and weaponized justice and victimhood and whatever else the Miller- and Bannon-inspired darkness can conjure. And they just want to own the libs, I hear- the option du jour when it comes to wasting a vote.

People never stop making excuses for him. He’s their guy, come hell or high water or childish outbursts or steady streams of bizarre consciousness that pass for press conferences and rally speeches, or angry 3am tweeting from who knows where.

You’d think at some point he’s just going to succumb to the constant pressure from all the lawsuits and indictments and daily assaults on his name. We should be so lucky. We also shouldn’t be holding our breath, waiting for such a welcome eventuality. Because he seems to live for this crap, like it’s what gets him out of bed in the morning, if he sleeps at all.

A never-ending roller coaster ride can’t be good for the human body. A constant release of endorphins and adrenaline can’t be healthy. Constant highs and lows, emotions that run the gamut from hopefulness to seething anger and little actual peace, will, one might think, wreak havoc on the average person’s well-being.

We’ve been “through it” as a nation, over the last four years in particular, struggling through a pandemic, having to listen to a dumb, incompetent man who ended up as President, putting up with insane and incessantly incendiary rhetoric from a news outlet created solely to mess with our heads and spew bullshit and badmouth the decent human who took over the Presidency from the aforementioned idiot in what, by any account that matters, was a free and fair election in 2020.

We’ve had nothing but a pile of gristle on our plates for the past 8 years– even while Trump was out of office!– and a ridiculously large number of us say, in all seriousness, that they want seconds.

Trump is seeing how far he can push things, finding out where the boundaries are. That’s all he wants. He doesn’t really want to be POTUS, from the standpoint of actually having to do the job. He just wants what in his mind is the satisfaction of retribution, possessing what he thinks has been rightfully his since November of 2020.

He has no idea what to do if he were to get there again, other than drink in the power and bask in the limelight, pardon the “victims” of January 6, dismiss the cases against him, and tear the world apart in numerous ways.

I hope the center holds and poll workers can do their jobs. One has to believe that there are more motivated voters who want nothing to do with him than there are those who are on an IV drip of the Kool-Aid and haven’t been thinking straight for a while now.

Everything related to Trump is about plotting and strategy, about what’s gonna work best for him so he can keep winning… whether it’s the 2024 campaign or the 91 felony counts he faces.

The latest blood-boiling attempt at interference comes amidst efforts at hammering out a border deal, currently being discussed by both major parties. It seems Trump doesn’t want the deal because it will make Joe Biden look good and take away something he, Trump, was planning to campaign on.

To the Senators who now act like they don’t know what to do: ignore the son of a bitch and get the deal done!

How can this lowlife impostor have so much influence? It boggles the mind.