Prepare for Change

 In his business career, Donald J. Trump has filed for bankruptcy six times.  Is he now trying to bankrupt the United States?  Currently the US National debt is almost $39 trillion.  Just paying the interest on such a debt is a huge portion of our annual expenditure.  A wise leader would work on bringing that down and tightening our belts a bit. Instead, Trump's administration has started an unnecessary war with Iran that has so far cost at least $29 billion, and there is no end in sight.  The proposed annual budget for the Defense Department is $1.5 trillion, a 50% inscrease.  On top of that, Trump has proposed a "Golden Dome" missile defense program that will cost at least $1.2 trillion.   Even small things like the White House ballroom ($1 billion) add up quickly.  The $1.3 million no-bid reflecting pool paint job has now ballooned to nearly $15 million.Trump has sued the United States for $10 billion, and rather than fighting it in c...

  President Trump gets upset about many things. One of these things is transportation. He doesn’t seem to like it. Here is some evidence of that. The Border Road, which follows the border of Canada and the United States near the Sweetwater crossing, has been in use for dozens of years. Now suddenly the US decides it needs to close this road because of unspecified illegal entry into the US. Another border problem that Trump sees is the newly built $3.8 billion Gordie Howe International Bridge, connecting Detroit, Michigan with Windsor, Ontario. Trump is seeking to prevent its opening, perhaps because his friend owns a current bridge that will then have competition. California’s high-speed rail program would be the only high-speed rail in the US. The Trump administration has canceled several grants to the project, severely hindering its construction. The goal seems to be to kill the entire project. The Trump Administration halted funding for a new subway syst...

 In 2004 Howard Dean was running to be the democratic contender for president of the United States.  After a loss in Iowa, he made a speech to rally his followers.  At one point he let out a shout or "scream" that became a favorite clip for the news media to play.  Apparently the idea was that anybody who screamed like that once in his life could certainly not be president.  Dean lost. Fast forward to the present.  79-year-old president Donald Trump doesn't scream, but he does speak.  Often.  Strangely, for a president.  Below are recent quotes from him, that in context are much worse than they look just as snippets.  Worse than a scream.  And yet, there seems to be little reaction to these out-of-kilter thoughts and pronouncements.  Maybe if you see them all in a row they'll hit differently.   Your daughter, she has to be of age. Like above 6 years old. All of the people that died through the roadside bombs. Died...

  My traffic cone experience, 3/2/26 I planned to protest at the Trump statue today for an hour, as I did once before. I have flyers promoting my proposed ordinance that any presidential statue on public property in Rapid City has to have a traffic cone on its head IF that president was a convicted felon. So, I brought along a traffic cone to make the point for the ordinance (so far, Trump is the only president this ordinance would apply to). I also had a sign that said “Trump is a felon” on one side and “Trump starts wars” on the other. I got there about 9:55. The statue is on a corner, so there is plenty of space to walk back and forth without bothering any pedestrians. So, I stuck the cone on Trump’s head (it’s got a rubber base so it can’t hurt the statue) and started slowly walking back and forth. One guy across the street gave me the finger and yelled something at me. Several cars honked when they went by. Another guy stopped at the corner and told me I coul...

  1/28/26 I planned today to protest at the Trump statue downtown. Rapid City, SD has life-size statues of every president downtown, spread out to different corners. I wrote a city ordinance proposal that would require if any president had a felony or felonies, their statue must have a traffic cone on its head. This way, a felon would not be as honored as much as the other non-felon presidents. Trump, a felon, had his statue placed a few months ago. Of course, there’s not much chance that such an ordinance would pass, and when I sent it to the council persons, the mayor, and the group that manages the statues, only one councilman replied, and he thought it was a funny idea. So, if the city council doesn’t take you seriously, what to do? I thought to demonstrate by the statue and hand out flyers about the ordinance. And thus, flyers, sign, and traffic cone packed up, I drove downtown to demonstrate for about an hour (10-11). Nice weather, by the way. When ...

 It makes no logical sense for the United States to try to take control of Greenland without the consent of its citizens.  Did we not go to war ourselves to gain our independence from Britain?  Are we not a part of NATO, a mutual defense pact that includes Greenland?  Would we not fight like hell if Russia tried to take Alaska back?  So what on earth is going on? Trump is almost 80.  It's obvious that he is slowing down both physically and mentally.  The people he has put in positions of power around him, like Stephen Miller, seemingly hate international law.  Treaties?  That's for the Little People.  International courts?  We're above that.  The Constitution?  We've evolved past that.    Greenland has mineral resources, access to the opening Arctic waterways, has no defenses, and only has about 65,000 citizens.  AND, on there mercator map it looks HUGE!   It's a bit cold, but global warming i...

  Countries Trump wants to add onto the United States (pop. 347 million), turning the US into Trumpistan:   Canada (pop. 40 million) - " The president has repeatedly floated the idea of acquiring Canada, despite Canada's repeated rejection of the concept."  Colombia  (pop. 53 million)  - " Trump Says U.S. Oversight of Venezuela Could Last for Years " Cuba  (pop. 11 million) - GOP Cheers on Regime Change With Cuba in Trump's Crosshairs Greenland  (pop. 56,000) - Exclusive: Trump Admiistration Mulls Payments to Sway Greenlanders to Join US Mexico  (pop. 132 million) - Trump's Attacks on Venezuela Put Mexico On Edge Venezuela  (pop. 28.5 million) - Trump Clarifies Who is Ultimately in Charge of Venezuela:"Me"  If Trump had his way, 265.5 million more people would be called Americans, or rather, Trumpistanians.  Trump is almost 80 years old and knows his time is limited.  He wants to build his legacy with buildings (White House b...

 Social media is designed to make us addicts .  And what do we get addicted to?  Scrolling nonstop through AI slop and unverified "news" coverage.  Content creators are more rewarded for sensationalism than reality.  And what does that do to society?  We become nonsense addicts.  We no longer care what facts are and instead rely on whoever seems to be the most aggressive and persuasive.  I don't think I'm going to like the future. 

  https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/trump-admin-orders-another-coal-plant-to-stay-open/   "On Tuesday, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued a now familiar order: because of a supposed energy emergency, a coal plant scheduled for closure would be forced to remain open. This time, the order targeted one of the three units present at Craig Station in Colorado, which was scheduled to close at the end of this year. The remaining two units were expected to shut in 2028."  BUT THEN...   https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/government-officials-spark-backlash-over-003000545.html   "Five major in-progress wind farm projects have come to a screeching halt after the Department of the Interior paused offshore leases on Monday. It cited national security concerns around radar interference from turbines. Developers, for their part, have said their designs were made in close collaboration with military officials." * * * * *  This is what happens when...

  https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/trillions-for-war-pennies-for-people-how-soaring-military-spending-fails-americans   I won’t let Reagan off the hook — there was plenty of waste back then, but today it’s worse. We’ve built an expansive, “cover-the-globe” strategy, trying to be everything, everywhere at once. We’re overstretched, inefficient, and spending over half of the military budget — 54% —on Pentagon contractors. When you combine all these factors, a clear picture emerges — what we call the “Trillion Dollar War Machine” — showing where all this money is going and why it’s not actually making us more secure. William Hartung: Basically, we’re asking the smaller military to undertake missions impossible: impose democracy at the barrel of a gun, reconstruct a country at the same time it’s being destroyed. We’ve had 20-year wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where the U.S. spent more and had superior technology, but that didn’t determine the outcom...

  AI does not think for itself.  It only knows what it has been fed.  It can do amazing things WITH that information, but that's how it works.  So now, AI skeptic and musician Rick Beato has invented a musical artist out of thin air using AI.    Where do things go from here?  AI can not claim copyright.  So that's good.  But now real musicians have competition from non-existent competitors.  Is this good?    "The promise of automation was to do the mundane so human creativity can flourish.  Instead, human creativity is demeaned as mundane so Big Tech's machines can flourish." [Thinking Like a Human, by David Weitzner, p. 114] 

  Imagine if a bunch of billionaires and large corporations got together and tried to push a shiny Black Box on the world. It would require that electricity production be doubled. It would take 20% of fresh water. The positive claims for it are that it would reduce work loads for humans. It would be inventive, smart, and powerful. And that’s all you know about the Black Box. Would you buy it? This is AI, or the new Artificial Intelligence. It’s promoted as a sort of one-size-fits-all panacea for mankind. AI is training the Black Box to think more like a human, but still only being a Black Box that is limited to the data it is fed. The selling point is that AI can then replace humans in jobs. “We believe that it is possible that deep learning systems are less than a decade away from superintelligence,” Pachocki added. He described superintelligence as systems smarter than humans across a large number of critical actions.  [https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/28/sa...

 Why does Trump even want to be president when he’s just tearing everything about our government down? DOGE comes along and fires thousands of employees, Russ Vought comes around and fires 4000 more, hoping to keep firing. Trump shuts down any help for states that didn’t vote for him. He tears down part of the White House. The only thing that’s doing well under him is ICE, which got a huge increase in their budget. Does he want to be president so he can destroy our government? Trump wants to absorb the powers of both the judicial and legislative branches into the executive, thus negating a key part of the Constitution. Trump’s tariffs are decimating many small businesses, from farmers to bourbon producers. Some may never recover. Make America Great Again refers to around 1901, when corporations held huge power over the country and the government was weak. This is what Trump wants; let the oligarchs do what they want and keep any potential trouble source for the...

  https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/trump-seems-to-back-off-portland-military-plan/283-e9c6bdfb-92d6-4881-bb74-09bb325a5270  Based on something he saw on TV, 79-year-old President Trump believed that a sort of war was going on in Portland, Oregon.  So he felt the need to send in National Guard troops.  But then he got a call from Oregon's governor saying that there was no war and no need for troops...   "I spoke to the governor, she was very nice," Trump said. "But I said, 'Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what's happening? My people tell me different.' They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place...it looks like terrible." So somebody showed Trump some video on TV that convinced him Portland was on the verge of collapse.  Who did that?  What was he shown?  In another instance, Trump was convinced that all the glittery trimmings put up in the White House were actual...

What should be the guiding principle of the United States president? We know this from the Constitution, that the major duties of a president are: Commander in Chief appoint judges, ambassadors, and department heads “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” There is a guiding star for presidents written in the Constitution. But there is also a way it is being handled today. The American Way 1. “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity “ 2. I will find a way to help accomplish this. For example, a president might try to ensure that American citizens can access medical care in a quick and affordable manner. But instead we have this, The Trump Way 1. They have done something terrible to us. 2. I will react in a cruel way. For instance, Trump rails against how other countries a...

  On February 3 I posted here that “A coup has begun in the US.” A big part of that was creating the Department of Government Efficiency, which by subsuming another department, was able to waltz into many governmental departments and start slashing and destroying projects that had taken years to build up and were appropriated by Congress. Eventually Elon Musk, who was heading DOGE, left in disgrace, and it has been shown that DOGE actually made things worse instead of better. But now, almost 7 months later, how goes the coup? At this point, I don’t think you can call it a coup as much as an attempt at a complete takeover of the entire society. Trump has influenced both the Legislative and Judicial branches of the federal government, thus weakening the Constitutional tri-partate system. He has super-charged a paramilitary service called Immigration and Customs Enforcement that was originally touted as going after illegal immigrants and criminals but has somehow managed t...

  https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/07/ai-in-wyoming-may-soon-use-more-electricity-than-states-human-residents/   "The project's energy demands are difficult to overstate for Wyoming, the least populous US state. The initial 1.8-gigawatt phase, consuming 15.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) annually, is more than five times the electricity used by every household in the state combined. That figure represents 91 percent of the 17.3 TWh currently consumed by all of Wyoming's residential, commercial, and industrial sectors combined. At its full 10-gigawatt capacity, the proposed data center would consume 87.6 TWh of electricity annually—double the 43.2 TWh the entire state currently generates."  AI sucks up energy like a vacuum cleaner sucks up dust; it takes everything it can get.  But do we really need AI if it comes at such a cost?  Who will benefit from AI?  Who is pushing it on the public?  What are all the hidden costs?   “The ...

 

  The book Thinking Like a Human: The Power of Your Mind in the Age of AI , by David Weitzner, helps us understand why AI (“Artificial Intelligence”) is problematic. There is a bit of woo thrown in here and there in Weitzner’s writings, but I find two sentences from the entire book that really summarize why we need to worry about the big push to grow AI. “The promise of automation was to do the mundane so human creativity can flourish. Instead, human creativity is demeaned as mundane so Big Tech’s machines can flourish.” [p. 114] and "Artful spaces want to nurture the slowness of experience in human time, while algorithmic spaces want us to ignore our bodies and respond to the prompts of digital commands." [ p. 230] Essentially, AI is dangerous because it is taking the promise of robotics to free mankind from dull, repetitive work, and instead is an attempt by ruthless and/or incompetent businessmen to replace higher-level human thought and work with their AI produ...

  https://www.reddit.com/r/Defeat_Project_2025/comments/1lfbr2x/ice_raids_and_their_uncertainty_scare_off_workers/   Trump claimed that his administration would expel illegal immigrants who are criminals, drug dealers, etc.  Instead, he expelling the very immigrants the country needs; hard-working, law-abiding immigrants.  Why?  What is the purpose, when the United States needs their labor?  If you want to find the illegal and criminal immigrants, you don't go to their court hearings, or their workplaces. That is where the GOOD immigrants are.  This is the tell.   Immigrants should indeed come here legally.  The government should go after the criminals and moochers.  Let's get this corrected, or we will have no one to work our farms.