Most absurd is the continued fabrication of the assertion that unauthorized voters have tilted the election results. Neither a legal nor a factual foundation supports the attempt to make voting subject to redundant validation. Like the lie that Trump won in 2020 the assertion that people are voting who have no right to do so has no basis in fact. There are 35,000 polling places which makes monitoring or policing the voting process virtually impossible for the Administration.

Even so the Postal Service has approved requirements that mailed ballots will not be delivered unless the state discloses its voter registration. This week the Supreme Court refused to invalidate this regulation leaving the substantive decision on its Constitutionality to be resolved in the future. A lower court injunction still stands but the Supreme Court’s order is a de facto green light to proceed.

Their obfuscation adds an element of uncertainty related to November’s election. The unsigned order is the work of embarrassing ideologues who seem to have replaced the Constitution with the 2025 Report. When if and how the reg. is applied is open. As the Supreme Court obliquely opined, “time will tell.”

The few sovereign nations which can be labeled “happy” and successful, Norway and Singapore to mention two, have several characteristics in common. 1) a degree of homogeneity , 2) empathy for the common citizen, 3) some shared values.

To assess our cohesion, consider five markers: 1) cultural 2) political 3) economic 4) genetic 5) technological.

Culture: Diversity is the norm. Start with religion. We have a broad spectrum of Christian denominations, ranging from Unitarianism to Catholic and Pentecostal evangelism to mention just a few. Add to the religious mélange, Islam, Judaism, and Hindi. The adherents of these diverse institutions manifest a range of beliefs which bleed into their politics. Ethnic variants are also broad. Economic status and the amount of education impact opinion.

Negative values include a broad-based gun culture and its impact on suicide, random violence and mass murders. Homelessness, a factor of economic insecurity, drug dependence and post-traumatic stress disorder emanating from our serial wars also factor in.

Individualism is a fundamental societal trait. It is rooted in our pioneer values of self-sufficiency. It has a positive dimension given that it animates the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurial initiative, aspects of the national character. A negative side is that even social improvements can be seen just from the viewpoint of personal gain rather than societal benefit.

Technology. In the preindustrial age humans used tools, hoes, and hand looms. Ultimately, we used surrogates to increasingly expand our productive capacity; water wheels, the cotton gin, the steam engine. We then jumped to intellectual surrogacy; the telegraph, moving pictures, radio, and then the remote transmission of information culminating in the internet. Increased dependency on a surrogate diminished our attention span and capacity to think. Now with robotization of labor and use of Artificial Intelligence we have given rise to synthetic thought with the risk of substantially displacing ourselves.

Political: Although we have only two dominant national political parties their values diverge broadly. The Republican party of fiscal conservatism and small government has disintegrated. The values manifested in Project 2025 infuse policy. Anti-immigration is a dominant theme. Small government has morphed into executive autocracy. “Great” and “beautiful” are vacuous defining superlatives. Christian White Supremacy is an ideological aspiration. Democrats decry a lack of affordability and Administration efforts to shred the safety net but struggle to formulate a resonant message.

Economic: Regressive taxes which shelter the rich and burden the poor have contributed to the largest wealth gap since the 19^th century Gilded Age. Innovation is predicated on economic gain ignoring the social consequences. Data centers proliferate to support Large Language Models, of A. I. overutilizing water and energy.

Genetic: The population is diverse and pluralistic, with large European, African, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Asian groups giving rise to de facto tribalism.

Age: While some societies equate age with wisdom, the opposite is the case. The youth are dismissive of the elderly feeling that their ideas are stale dated.

Unifiers: What unites all Americans? Language, History, sports, and media driven celebrity. As for history, average Americans aren’t much interested in it. Sports and celebrity transcend the previously mentioned markers. Taylor Swift may be as popular as Jesus and better known than Thomas Jefferson, perhaps.

Conclusions: The bonds that made us “United” were always qualified and tenuous. Georgia and Massachusetts were bound in a marriage of convenience rather than mutual respect. Other than periods when we shared a common enemy, Nazi Germany then Communism, the ties were more transactional.

Our fractured unity might be impossible to mend. Given the depth of division would it be better to say 250 years is enough? It might survive as “the least undesirable alternative,” to paraphrase Winston Churchill. I’ve Just coined a word that characterizes the American experience-incohesion.

Put in perspective the current negative impact of humanity on the earth is the sixth global extinction event. Change is constant. Life is resilient. But that does not mean that we, masters of the universe, should passively accept the negative consequences of our collective way of life.

What is the magnitude of our impact on our planetary home? Generally, carbon-related air pollution increases extreme weather; heat, drought, tornados, rain torrents, wind. One result is that it is harder to control fires and there are more of them. Drought impact ranges from dramatically reduced water storage putting pressure on supply and stresses on the use of rivers as supply routes.

Long term, we have lost 1/3 of our forests. The Amazon rain forest has lost 17% in the last 50 years. One half of the freshwater is degraded. The oceans have become human trash dumps. One to two million tons of plastic end up in the oceans. There are five garbage patches, gyres, one the size of Texas. It is projected that the plastic in the oceans will exceed the weight of all the fish by 2050.

Fully 99% of the air we breathe fails to meet the adequate safety standards set by the World Health Organization. Every day 2000 children die largely because of the bad air they breathe.

To be sure, the world’s governments are not supine. Ameliorative programs mitigate the damage. But it is to use the cliché, “too little, too late”. Apocalyptic end games are not yet reality. But every year increases the difficulty of turning back the negative consequences of how we collectively live our lives.

Still some progress has been made. The 2015 Paris Agreement committed the world to limiting the increase in greenhouse gas emissions related temperature to 1.5% above preindustrial levels. The current projection is that the increase will be 2.3 to 2.9%. Energy produced by clean wind and solar sources is 15% of the total and the cheapest source. That’s the good news and bad news. The glass is half full but don’t drink it.

Fracking, the high-pressure injection of fluid into deep sandstone and shale layers has increased production of oil and gas and made the US a leading producer and exporter of fossil fuels.

Fracking started after the civil war when an innovator used torpedoes to fracture oil producing zones and increase production tenfold. Use of dynamite gave way to napalm and sand and finally fluids injected into the sub-strata at high pressure to cause fissures in permeable formations. The common composition of up to 3.5 million gallons per well is 90% water, 9.5% sand and .5% chemicals including salt, acid, and methane. The fluid is injected at 133 barrels per minute. (Wikipedia)

Despite regulation, widespread injection wells, repositories of fracking wastewater, have resulted in environmental degradation, seismic instability, and health problems. (NYT 08052026). Loose regulation has made Ohio a destination for fracking wastewater. About 1.4 billion gallons of wastewater are injected into the Ohio sub-surface annually.

Recently, briny wastewater has erupted to the surface and resulted in groundwater contamination. Four wells only two miles from Marietta, Ohio’s drinking water source tested for radiation up to 1,800 times the acceptable safe level.

Put in perspective, fracking waste is just one of many industrial waste sources polluting our air, soil and water. A 2019 survey reported that 21,000 sources dispose of 2.16 billion pounds of industrial waste on land, 580 billion in the air and 201 billion in our water. There are 2.1 million abandoned oil and gas wells, many of which are leaking. The Superfund program charged with cleaning the worst polluted sites identified 1,340 sites of which 458 have been cleaned.

The Trump administration has reversed the trend to reduce pollution. They have eliminated requirements which reduce pollutants, eviscerated the Environmental Protection Agency and aborted renewable energy initiatives. Now the cascade of AI data center construction threatens to generate additional unhealthy pollution equal to the output of half the American passenger vehicles. (NYT 07072026)

As a society we care more about achieving economic objectives than avoiding the compound negative consequences.

The opinions would be viewed as troubling humbug were it not for his millions of followers on X and his economic concentration of power discussed by Tim O’Reilly in the Economist (07252026). The corporate structure of Space X illustrates his lack of accountability to anyone. He controls 85% and the structure eliminates independent board members. Same goes for Tesla. The opinion claims that Musk is indifferent to shareholder value. All he wants is the cash to fulfill his ambitions. His goals go beyond eliminating accountability and extend to influencing governmental policy. Finally, harnessing AI to his toolbox gives him unpredictable power potential.

Musk is literally a one-man band and many, if not all of us, are dancing to his tune.

Peter Thiel is known for his role in Pay Pal, his libertarian conservatism and the security- oriented data collator, Palantir. Dig deeper into his bio and you find shades of genius manifested in a diversity of interests-chess for example- and multiple intellectual pursuits.

Efforts to stereotype Thiel as a crypto- fascist are unwarranted. He is more an Ayn Rand disciple of high achievement. He believes that government often stands in the way of progress. A review of his Wikipedia bio took me to what is thought to be his magnum opus, The Straussian Moment. It is a dense history of human thought, a bit like crossing a fast-running stream dancing from one rock to another. He takes issue with the enlightenment and the social contract. Diverse belief systems are in conflict; post 9/11 western values versus Islam for example. His journey takes him from John Locke to Hobbes, Thomas Paine and Milton Friedman. For Thiel unity is artificial. Violence is persistent.

Thiel is philanthropic, supporting causes that are consistent with his conservative drift. He is homosexual and married, in contrast to Musk’s revolving door marriages and fruitful multiplication.

As for Palantir, it engages in multi-national security facilitation with ties to Israeli and American intelligence among others. It has obtained lucrative contracts with government agencies in the UK including the National Health Service. Critics accuse it of punching above its weight with mediocre product. Paradoxically it has a parasitic relationship with government generating nearly $700 million in income in the US, a generous return on a few millions given to Trump’s pet projects. (Geoghan and Amin, London Review of Books (07/23/2026)

Thiel flirts with a society governed by technocrats rather than bureaucrats. He is heedless of the prospect that the latter might functionally evolve into the former over time.

Thiel was satirized in a TV comedy, Silicon Valley, in which a character constructs an autonomous society on a platform in the ocean. In contrast, Musk’s vision of colonizing Mars tops the vision thing.

Personally, I would rather spend money on saving the world we have. But maybe I would have turned up my nose on Columbus.

Is narcissism the reason that leaders are captives of their illusions and cling to power as the society they lead sinks? Trump’s fixation with fiasco is mirrored by Netanyahu’s belligerence and concessions to the Ultra-orthodox in a frantic attempt to salvage his disastrous coalition. He has extended subsidies to religious schools which don’t teach math and science. He has continued military deferments for orthodox men studying Talmud at a time when his military exploits on multi fronts have stretched the army to the breaking and extended tours of duty of reserves.

A case can be made that one consistent component of his policy over the years was to lay down obstacles to prevent Palestinian self-governance. One element of his approach was to pander to Hamas to keep the rival Palestinian Authority off balance.

The failure to implement the Oslo Accords leading to a Palestinian State is not uniquely Israel’s fault. The long road of the conflict is littered with Arab failure to accept the reality of Israel, expand tension and animosity with suicide bombs, rockets, hostile propaganda, and martyr support. To an Israeli, it might appear that the only way to achieve acceptance is force.

Recently their Sunni neighbors opened relationships with Israel, recognizing that Iran and its fundamentalist surrogates posed the greatest threat to stability in the region. Expanding these normalizing engagements came at a time when Hamas’ assault on Israel; killing 1200, rape, destruction, and hostage taking. Increased Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian farmers and shepherds and expansion of Israeli occupation followed.

The scorched earth response in Gaza combined with vigilantism and West Bank land grabs have manifestly diminished Israel’s reputation. American support has eroded. People on the left go as far as to charge Israel with genocide and apartheid. This could be as bad as it gets.

The looming October election is likely to result in the exit of Netanyahu, his extremist colleagues Smotrich and Ben Gvir and the ultra-orthodox from active governance. Eisenkot , a rival candidate, is likely to form a more moderate coalition but one that still excludes Palestinian political parties.

The election could lead to a more pragmatic approach to Palestinian autonomy. Releasing Marwan Barghouti, a respected Palestinian, from prison and letting him take an active role in emergent Palestinian self-rule would help. An incremental approach including Hamas pragmatists in the process could have benefit . A significant gain would be Saudi recognition of Israel.

Every intractable conflict reaches a point when it is ripe for resolution. Let’s hope that this one is approaching that point.

Is narcissism the reason that leaders are captives of their illusions and cling to power as the society they lead sinks? Trump’s fixation with fiasco is mirrored by Netanyahu’s belligerence and concessions to the Ultra-orthodox in a frantic attempt to salvage his disastrous coalition. He has extended subsidies to religious schools which don’t teach math and science. He has continued military deferments for orthodox men studying Talmud at a time when his military exploits on multi fronts have stretched the army to the breaking and extended tours of duty of reserves.

A case can be made that one consistent component of his policy over the years was to lay down obstacles to prevent Palestinian self-governance. One element of his approach was to pander to Hamas to keep the rival Palestinian Authority off balance.

The failure to implement the Oslo Accords leading to a Palestinian State is not uniquely Israel’s fault. The long road of the conflict is littered with Arab failure to accept the reality of Israel, expand tension and animosity with suicide bombs, rockets, hostile propaganda, and martyr support. To an Israeli, it might appear that the only way to achieve acceptance is force.

Recently their Sunni neighbors opened relationships with Israel, recognizing that Iran and its fundamentalist surrogates posed the greatest threat to stability in the region. Expanding these normalizing engagements came at a time when Hamas’ assault on Israel; killing 1200, rape, destruction, and hostage taking. Increased Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian farmers and shepherds and expansion of Israeli occupation followed.

The scorched earth response in Gaza combined with vigilantism and West Bank land grabs have manifestly diminished Israel’s reputation. American support has eroded. People on the left go as far as to charge Israel with genocide and apartheid. This could be as bad as it gets.

The looming October election is likely to result in the exit of Netanyahu, his extremist colleagues Smotrich and Ben Gvir and the ultra-orthodox from active governance. Eisenkot , a rival candidate, is likely to form a more moderate coalition but one that still excludes Palestinian political parties.

The election could lead to a more pragmatic approach to Palestinian autonomy. Releasing Marwan Barghouti, a respected Palestinian, from prison and letting him take an active role in emergent Palestinian self-rule would help. An incremental approach including Hamas pragmatists in the process could have benefit . A significant gain would be Saudi recognition of Israel.

Every intractable conflict reaches a point when it is ripe for resolution. Let’s hope that this one is approaching that point.

He expands his view in his recent book, Communion. The book endorses white Christian nationalism suggesting its role in the founding of the country, a questionable conclusion. e overlookH He overlooks the separation of church and state, and the freedom of religion ensconced in our unique concept of government.

A purported disciple of St. Augustine, he warns against a demonic force and the “snares of the devil”. (NYT Lozada, 07/12/2026) Migration dilutes Christian values he argues. He posits a civilizational decline and the lack of a shared moral language and values such as duty to our neighbors. The book seems to stray from the tenets of Austine’s focus on positive aspirations like embracing love and purity.

Jump to Texas where Christian crusaders are warring against the imagined threat of replacing civil law with Muslim shariah law. Fear of a cascade of culturally alien immigrants is a corollary to stressing the need for white Christian dominance. True, cultural dissonance is an attribute of pluralism, but it is also a strength. Some are best with a broom, but let’s not forget the entrepreneurial brilliance of a South African immigrant, Elon Musk and others like him.

It is prudent to regulate the border, but it is a hysterical overreaction to turn off the lamp on the Statue of Liberty.

Which brings us back to Vance. What comes next in his circuitous journey to celebrity? Can we hope that he will ultimately seek counsel from his “better angels” or is he just another opportunistic demagogue?

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Federal and state laws have been adopted intended to reduce access to people who are more likely to use them to harm others. But the Supreme Court has danced around history and public safety by supporting gun owners over public safety. (NYT 07082026) The right to bear arms is in the second amendment of the Constitution. “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”. It’s a stretch to use this language to justify what we have today. The historic need for a militia to avoid tyranny has morphed into the right to keep a weapon at home for self-defense.

The Supreme Court has opined that weapons that were in “common use” were OK. “History and tradition “ are also factored in. A 1939 case came close to tying actual history to today when they decided that sawed off shotguns were not protected because they were not what a citizen’s militia would use. The reality is that a historic citizens militia would not be armed by semi-automatic weapons. Machine guns are outlawed so why not semi-automatic weapons?

Looking ahead Justice Kavanaugh has indicated the likelihood that the Supreme Court will conclude that possession of a semi-automatic AR 15 is protected when he suggested that millions of Americans own them and they pass the “common use” test.

Before the Supreme Court rules, the Administration has deleted over 30 regulations related to gun possession and sale. (NYT 07072026). It is now harder to revoke a gun dealer’s license, easier for a person with a history of mental illness to buy a gun and easier to buy a tripod used in mass shooting.

The Administration is challenging state-initiated restrictions on the sale of semi-automatic weapons. Guns can now be sent in the mail.

It is obvious that the Administration cares little about the common good.

A.I. doesn’t and can’t think, he explains. Its answers are calculations drawn from the mass of data deployed in “training” the systems. Its responses are probability formulations, not facts. The generative process is dynamic and evolving. Responses are monitored by humans who in retrospect assign positive or negative values to at least some of the answers.

The cumulation of interactions results in responses that are “people pleasers”. Overseers add what are called “system prompts”, behavior models. Despite the constraints imposed by the handlers, the chatbots can still be manipulated into varying from the norms, a process called “jailbreaking”. An example cited was getting the car dealer chatbot to sell an SUV for $1. A chatbot wiping out a user’s database is not uncommon as are hallucinatory false answers.

Tufeki concludes, “generative A.I. as it currently exists cannot easily replace human beings, because it cannot manifest human intelligence”. To effectively deal with its implications we need to understand its limitations. An example is a recipe conjured by A.I. that tastes bad.

I found his analysis both reassuring and frightening. Its use is expanding. Economists can’t project the impact of its implementation. Every month there are 45 billion applications by 1.5 billion users. The data centers that generate the responses use about 5% of all the energy generated in the U.S. This is just the beginning.

In 1993 a shooter entered a law office in San Francisco and killed eight people. This precipitated security measures that turned public buildings into prisons. Access requires security codes for the elevators. The same applies to room entry in hotels.

If security were important we fail abysmally when it comes to access to guns. Americans own over 300 million guns thanks to our Supreme Court’s sophomoric interpretation of the Constitutional right to bear arms. The founding fathers recognized the importance of militia membership. It was important for a citizen to possess a seven-step single shot front loading musket. Our Supreme Court endows people with the right to own a weapon with the fire power of a battalion. Any fool can reach the conclusion that this is far beyond what the founders intended. Every week we witness a multiple victim shooting. This past week two people were killed in a library. And yet six of the Justices struck a Hawaii law which limited open carry guns in some public spaces. Have they watched too many Western movies? Do they not see the connection between access to guns and the endless chain of mass murders? Our murder rate is 20 times Japan’s. But a jar of vitamins has three seals. So much for societal security.

On a broader front, international security, our government has sacrificed trillions of dollars and fifty thousand young lives in continual wars against imaginary adversaries. Some wars were conceived under the illusion that we might change the culture and facilitate western style democracy in conservative Muslim countries. Decades ago we overturned a secular government in Iran over access to oil and sent the country on a slide to fundamentalist theocracy. When we took Iraq based upon lies about their nuclear program our occupation excluded the Iraqi military from a role in governance precluding the only societal strata with the potential to facilitate a transition to a civil society. Virtually every intervention has failed. And the recent assault on Iran is recognized as a colossal fiasco.

Domestic problems such as health care, affordable housing, have been ignored or approached with half-hearted measures. We take comfort in academic superiority and entrepreneurial excellence. But even these strengths are challenged by China’s capacity to focus and our government’s desire to pinch pennies to reduce taxes for the super-rich.

Reelecting a pathological liar, convicted felon, serial grifter, and misogynist as the first among equals is definitive evidence of our societies deeply flawed values. The 250^th anniversary of our founding should be a time for sober reflection. But the view forward is tainted by algae.

White Europeans get the blame for colonization and enslavement but much of the responsibility for slavery falls on Muslim cultures. A book on the subject by Justin Marozzi is reviewed in the London Review of Books (06/21/2026).

Apologists seek to distinguish between abusive Christian slavery and benign Muslim slavery. The Quran legitimized and institutionalized slavery. For example, if a father acknowledged paternity of a child born to a slave, the offspring had the same inheritance rights as a free born child. Manumission was also covered.

The Muslim conquest of much of the Middle East provided a rich and versatile slave resource. Military slaves, Mamluks, became indentured soldiers. The Abbasid dynasty utilized captives in agriculture, converting the Tigris salt marshes.

The Ottoman Empire drew slaves from all the subjugated cultures including white Circassians. African slaves were deprecated as dull and racially inferior. Slaves were mostly female. A degree of social mobility led some Mamluk military slaves to achieve status in various functions including art and archeology.

Slavery was ubiquitous. It was a part of Greek, Roman and Jewish culture. Russian serfs were slaves. It existed in India and China. English slave traders bought humans in African markets and transported them to New World plantations. Our founding principal, that “all men are created equal…” excluded slaves, women and workers without property. Trade in slaves was outlawed by England in 1807, and slavery was abolished 30 years later.

What should we make of this? Stratification, tribalism rather than equality, is still the norm. Even societies conceived as egalitarian gravitate to hierarchy, for example, Communist led China, Viet Nam and Russia.

Now, the world faces a new form of slavery; one that one that insidiously invades and captures the mind; a technological parasite, the social media and its accomplice “agent” A I.

Family history and his far-right orientation was discussed in an Economist article (05/30/2026). His Canadian grandfather moved to South Africa when whites were in charge. Grampa espoused the concept of government by engineers. Musk’s posts on X are personified by “white solidarity is the only way to survive.” He sympathizes with the great replacement theory; whites are imperiled. His social media platform X is home to mass black deportation advocate Martin Sellner and conspiracy theorist and anti Semite, Nick Fuentes. And that’s the resume of the richest man in the world. Would you buy a car from him?

One of his favorite states, Texas, capitalizes on its wind resource and is the largest wind energy producer in the country. Forty thousand megawatts are generated by 19,000 turbines, 28% of the total American wind energy production. To Trump, coal is “beautiful” (his favorite word) in contrast.

Trump came into power to find that four wind energy providers were in various stages of completing offshore wind turbine arrays. Trump bought the leases back with $1 billion of taxpayer’s money. The cancelled offshore projects would have provided cheap clean energy to over one million homes and businesses. If he gets away with it, Americans will have to pay out of their wallets and lungs for more expensive energy made from polluting sources. Even worse, as part of the deal, the energy companies committed to investing the money returned in oil and gas projects and infrastructure.

The administration used the Judgement Fund which was set up by Congress to resolve suits against the government. It planned to use it to finance the now dead slush fund. The Retribution Department (formerly the Justice Department) ignored the preconditions to tapping the Fund. There was no fact finding deliberation and no lawsuit to be settled.

Now seven Eastern seaboard states have sued to nullify the deal and restore the wind energy offshore projects. (NYT 06/03/2026) The suit claims that the statutory preconditions for cancelling an offshore lease were ignored.

It is likely that the states will prevail but not after wasting time and money in court. Once again, the administration has blatently ignored the law, this time to defer to the emotional whimsy of the man in charge.

At issue is protracted opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline which delivers 250,000 barrels of oil per day from the Bakken Oil Field to Illinois. The Bakken produces 9% of U.S. oil production. The pipeline is the project of Energy Transfer.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has opposed the pipeline for 10 years. The pipeline runs under Lake Oahe above the boundary of the Reservation. Source of the route under the lake is an easement granted by the Army Corp of Engineers.

The opposition has been validated by multiple oil spills emanating from the Keystone pipeline which also crosses North and South Dakota. Keystone spills have polluted water sources and farmland. One spill cost $44 million to clean up.

In 2020 a federal court agreed with a tribal suit and invalidated the easement under the lake. The tribe argued that the pipeline exposes its water sources and sacred areas to damage. The Army Corp of Engineers responded with a six-year long environmental impact review.

Greenpeace, an environmental nonprofit based in Netherlands with entities in the U. S., had actively supported the protests from the beginning. Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace in North Dakota. A jury found that Greenpeace was responsible for delays and extra project costs and awarded Energy Transfer $345 million in damages. If final, the award would bankrupt Greenpeace.

Responding to the award Greenpeace sued Energy Transfer in the Netherlands claiming that Energy Transfer’s suit violated the EU’s Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation law. North Dakota does not have a SLAPP law.

Energy Transfer next asked the North Dakota Supreme Court to curb Greenpeace’s authority to challenge the grounds of ET’s South Dakota victory by collaterally pursuing the suit in the Netherlands. The North Dakota court refused to prohibit Greenpeace from claiming that Energy Transfer’s suit was abusive. The Supreme Court’s order just told the lower ND court to prevent Greenpeace from claiming that the ND case lacked a legal foundation. Observers wonder how the ND court could restrict the latitude of the Dutch court at all.

It can be said that the North Dakota court still had Greenpeace under its thumb. The Supreme Court was also very discreet in exercising its jurisdiction. It is possible that the Dutch court will rule that the North Dakota jury award does not apply to the Netherlands based Greenpeace. But the American entities may still be exposed.

Step back and view the conflict and you can understand why everything is so costly and takes such a long time to complete in the good old USA. You can say so what, pipelines are just contributing to pollution and climate change. But what about affordable housing? The carousel goes round and round…

One unsolved mystery in the evolution of humanity is the origin of language. Other creatures communicate audibly but only homo sapiens has the capacity to learn and use thousands of words to express emotional nuance or the spectrum of reality. Even more astounding is the fact that there are about 7000 languages still in use.

Physiologically, we are the only creatures endowed with equipment suited for the purpose. Our larynx has the capacity to make many subtle nuanced sounds. The structure supporting it, the hyoid bone, helps it make diverse sounds. There is an area of the brain that specializes in communication.

How did it happen? The study of how animals communicate with one another provides evolutionary clues. Animals can express basic emotions and needs: fear, aggression, attraction, pain, hunger, gratification, for example. Expressing our feelings to others is social and survival driven. Consider the sound a single animal makes to alert the herd of an approaching predator.

Scientists speculate that language may have begun as early as two million, and as late as 300,000 years ago. To imagine how it evolved we must try to think like our ancestors.

Start with common sounds; peh and beh. Recognize the variations of ma and pa as they occur in half of the 7000 languages from Mandarin to Swahili. Think of a baby’s need to get someone’s attention. One word, thou, (you, du) has cognates in the seven Indo -European languages. Perhaps words evolved around functions like hunting or song- based celebration.

Academics have theorized on the development of language, including Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker. One issue considered is the number of proto languages that are original sources. The diversity of syntax between Japanese and German for example suggest that languages evolved independently rather than from a common source. To consider the diversity, the word for “house” has many variations; casa, dom, bayt, ev, le, fanza, nyumba, to mention a few.

Who was the breakthrough artist who decided to use fire regularly to cook food or the one who gave names to objects and functions? Sleep or eat for example. Lost in time but there were many humans endowed with a spirit of innovation. Curiosity and imagination are built- in human characteristics. That just scratches the surface of a fascinating subject.

In recent memory the only time it took in more than it spent was the post cold war peace dividend during the Clinton administration. One war after another has been paid for with borrowed money and dead youth: $2.3 trillion in Afghanistan, $3 trillion in Iraq alone and 50,000 killed in Viet Nam, for example.

As for the residual non-defense related available12%, federal agencies submit what they want to twelve Congressional subcommittees. The request gets kicked around the Senate and the House and a final tally, when passed by both Houses, gets sent to the President for a yes, no or yes but.

Which brings us to Trump two. His team cut spending by reducing health care subsidies for ordinary Americans and reduced taxes without a compensating revenue source. Under his “big beautiful?” bill, tax reductions are projected to be $4.5 trillion, and the deficit will increase to over $3.4 trillion over ten years.

Trump has continued to spend as if the supply of funds was limitless. The Iran war has cost over $200 billion. He wants $1 billion for security for his ballroom. And then we have $1.8 billion allocated to his fund to compensate victims of government persecution; convicted felons who beat up cops during the insurgency, so- called patriots who already got their get out of jail pass from the President. Is he out of his mind? Don’t answer that.

So far, the Republican Congress has genuflected to his every whim. But this round might be indigestible. Before they left for the holiday, their leadership tried to jam through $70 billion for the Iran war. But resistance related to Trump’s profligacy kept the leadership from success even as they used the reconciliation device to avoid the 60 Senator minimum needed to avoid a Democrat filibuster.

To add fuel to the fire, some Senators were angered when Trump endorsed the Texas A. G. Paxton, a sleaze, over their colleague, Texas Senator Conryn. It is likely that when they return, they will reject Trump’s slush fund and maybe trim his sails on the Iran war costs. All the turmoil increases Democrat hope that November’s election will give them control of the House as well as the Senate. Flipping four seats will do the trick. Ohio, Alaska, and Texas all look promising. Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

The next sequence of the self-dealing of the Century develops when Trump’s lawyers, The Department of broadly designated Justice, settled the case for $1.8 billion of the taxpayer’s money to be disbursed in Trump’s discretion to compensate victims of the Biden administration’s “weaponization.” This includes persons convicted of assault during the Capital invasion who were released from prison under Trump’s amnesty.

The IRS General Counsel resigned to avoid being tainted by the deal. The money is to be taken from a Judgement Fund, used to resolve federal litigation. $1.8 billion will be transferred to a new account. Disbursements will be overseen by a five-person board who serve at Trump’s discretion. The funds will be available to compensate victims of political, personal or ideological persecution, whoever that is.

A related element of the so-called settlement is that the IRS is barred forever from recovering taxes related to pending audits of Trump, his family and businesses. Trump’s exposure is $100 millon.

This misappropriation of taxpayer dollars is not unique. Trump and his family have made billions capitalizing on his role as head of state. Quid pro quo is the rule; a. e. investment in a Trump family crapto currency in return for access to Nvidia’s coveted chips.

Two capital police officers, victims of the insurrectionist assault on the Capital, have sued to block the creation of the fund. Even the Republican Congress persons are scratching their heads.

The Senate went home for the holiday without considering pending authorizations. Word has it that twenty Republican Senators oppose it. Maybe this time he has gone too far.

It started when an IRS contractor disclosed some of Trump’s tax records to the NYT demonstrating that he paid little or no income taxes. Two years later Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion. Given that he oversees the IRS there was no adversarial interest and the case lacked a bona fide controversy. Article III of the Constitution defines the scope of federal court jurisdiction. The President, suing himself or his own agent fails the test.

The next sequence of the self-dealing of the Century develops when Trump’s lawyers, The Department of broadly designated Justice, settled the case for $1.8 billion of the taxpayer’s money to be disbursed in Trump’s discretion to compensate victims of the Biden administration’s “weaponization.” This includes persons convicted of assault during the Capital invasion who were released from prison under Trump’s amnesty.

The IRS General Counsel resigned to avoid being tainted by the deal. The money is to be taken from a Judgement Fund, used to resolve federal litigation. $1.8 billion will be transferred to a new account. Disbursements will be overseen by a five-person board who serve at Trump’s discretion. The funds will be available to compensate victims of political, personal or ideological persecution, whoever that is.

A related element of the so-called settlement is that the IRS is barred forever from recovering taxes related to pending audits of Trump, his family and businesses.

This misappropriation of taxpayer dollars is not unique. Trump and his family have made billions capitalizing on his role as head of state. Quid pro quo is the rule; a. e. investment in a Trump family currency in return for access to Nvidia’s coveted chips.

Two capital police officers, victims of the insurrectionist assault on the Capital, have sued to block the creation of the fund. Even the Republican Congress persons are scratching their heads. Maybe this time he has gone too far.