The Children in the Room vs the Rest of World of Adults Pushing Back

  

The Children in the Room vs the Rest of World of Adults’ Pushing Back

Team Trump on a Course of Irreversible Rampage

"As members of Nato, we are committed to strengthening Arctic security as a shared transatlantic interest. The pre-coordinated Danish exercise Arctic Endurance conducted with Allies, responds to this necessity. It poses no threat to anyone… Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral. We will continue to stand united and coordinated in our response. We are committed to upholding our sovereignty." 

Joint statement from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland, nations participating in joint military exercises in Greenland.

“We choose fair trade over tariffs. We choose a productive long-term partnership over isolation.”

European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen after the EU and the South America’s Mercosur members close a massive free trade agreement, covering an aggregate 700 million people, including Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay and Brazil, a huge workaround the US.

“We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

 Canadian PM, Mark Carney at Davos

Why does Trump seem to hate Europe, treating Western countries on that continent worse than nations that are clear enemies? Perhaps, it is because in reaction to dictator Hitler’s brutal devastation of that continent and its people, Europe created the polar-opposite political system: elevating civil rights to the pinnacle of priorities, providing medical care and the protection of ordinary Europeans against corporate greed and rightwing politicians, hell-bent on ending democracy, as essentials… while embracing diversity, equality and inclusion as the implementing path. The ascension of these values has not been smooth, as the autocracy of Hungary’s Victor Orban illustrates, but as Trump has ramped up his attacks and absurd tariffs against our traditional allies, somehow that vast majority of Europe began to end the infighting, rallied to counter Trump’s attacks, not with naked resistance… but with reasoned and effective counter-measures.

Simply put, Europe represents an elite “woke” liberal modernity to Trumpers, while Trump stands for 18th and 19th century colonial barbarism and brute force. As Fareed Zacharia pointed out in his January 18th Global Public Square program on CNN, recent polls across Europe confirm that a bare 18% of Europeans still consider the United States as an ally… or even trustworthy. Others have noted mostly empty flights from Europe to the United States with photographs of the sparse jet cabins that were once packed to the gills.

Even as multiple polls for Trump show 58% of American categorize Trump’s second term to date as a failure, and 75% of Americans strongly disapprove of his effort to annex Greenland at all costs, Trump no longer seems to care what his sheep think. Punishing countries supporting Greenland’s independence as a Danish territory with increased American tariffs is equally reviled by these polls. In addition to a 1951 treaty guaranteeing the US unlimited access for US bases and soldiers, Denmark has repeated that the US remains able and welcome to expand its military footprint in Greenland. Denmark and the allies, noted in the above quote, have also agreed to assist the US in protecting national security. If US forces the takeover of Greenland, NATO would end, the real hit to American national security. Before Dems gloat over the unpopularity of Trump’s policies, such polls also show the Democratic Party leadership at an ugly 72% negative.

For those who believe that the decapitation of Venezuela’s president and declaration that “acting Venezuelan President” Donald Trump’s taking over of that nation’s oil and her oil fields will generate cheap oil, thus representing his contribution to “affordability” (the “Democrat’s hoax” according to Trump)… well not exactly. The challenge to rebuild Venezuela’s decimated petroleum industry infrastructure within the current oil glut would require US taxpayers to subsidize BIG OIL, something that is not popular with most Americans. Put another way, because Venezuelan crude is thick and heavy, it costs $80/barrel (and the dollar continues to depreciate) to refine what currently sells for $60/barrel. In short, there is no economic model that extracts Venezuelan oil at a price that benefits the American marketplace… unless there are taxpayer subsidies.

What’s worse, Trump’s tariffs have produced a reduction in US manufacturing jobs, hardly what he predicted. The big winner in all this appears to be China, signaling even Russia – its main supplier of electrical power – that they will no longer pay premium prices for energy products that can be substituted from other markets combined with China’s massive commitment to alternative energy. China just signed an agreement with European nations to allow a tariff free trade in automative products, where China totally dominates the EV market. Writing for the January 18th Associated Press, Paul Wiseman, explains how the US is losing traction almost everywhere with its economic bully tactics:

“Canada broke with the United States on Friday [1/16], slashing its 100% import tax on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products, particularly canola seeds… ‘It’s a huge declaration of realignment in Canada’s economic relations,’ said Edward Alden, who studies trade issues as senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ‘The economic threat from the United States is now perceived by Canadians as far bigger than the economic threat from China. So this is a big deal.’…

“[The] Trump administration, favoring fossil fuels over green energy, ‘is actively hostile to EV production in North America,’ said economist Mary Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. America’s opposition ‘threatens to make the North American [auto] industry obsolete in the future, as China moves ahead with rapid quality improvements in batteries and electronics for EVs.’…

“China, pounded by U.S. tariffs since Trump’s first term, has diversified its exports away from the world’s biggest economy to markets such as Europe and Southeast Asia. It seems to be working. China’s trade surplus with the rest of the world surged to a record $1.2 trillion last year, the Chinese government reported Wednesday [1/14], despite tumbling exports to the U.S.

“Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has overturned seven decades of U.S. policy toward ever-freer trade. He’s imposed double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country as well as singling out specific industries, such as steel and autos, for levies of their own… The president’s use of import taxes often has been arbitrary and unpredictable.”

Further, Wall Street and corporate America have sent an unsubtle rejection of Trump efforts to unseat Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, and marginalize the Fed’s independence. As the market fell after this Trump assault began, economists may have convinced Trump that his efforts might undermine the dollar into endless inflationary freefall. A recent judicial motion by the DOJ to reject efforts to impose a court-appointed monitor to supervise the release of the Epstein papers combined with inept Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s clumsy failure to convince most Americans that sweet, little blonde homemaker, Renee Good (RIP) was a “domestic terrorist” who deserved to be shot by ICE… have painted an ugly-on-uglier picture of Trump’s presidency.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless Congress, the Courts and the voters do not put up fierce resistance to virtually of Trump’s 2.0 policies, and slam shut his efforts to rig elections, future life in the United States will unravel to a level most Americans have never seen and will truly hate.

The World Adjusts Around Megalomaniacal Donald Trump

   

The World Adjusts Around Megalomaniacal Donald Trump

“President of the World” is Viewed as an Unstable Non-Genius Bully

"France must be available to assess the threat, adapt, and stand alongside a sovereign state to protect its territory." 

 French Emmanel Macron addressing soldiers before troops send to join other NATO forces going to Greenland for “exercises.”

Let me start with Trump’s stupidest obsession to date, to me the clearest sign to me of an old man who has lost his mind: the announced intention to annex Greenland. The US has a treaty right to send unlimited troops and establish any level of military bases on the world’s largest island, a Danish territory. We’ve had as many as 17 bases, but today there is only one. All our choice.

Something has snapped in Trump’s 2.0 mind, and in his second term, the adults in the Trump 1.0 room are gone. He has surrounded himself with a cabinet that prioritizes Trump above the Constitution, accepts his warped vision of the world as the gospel; he has purged senior military officers, prosecutors, intelligence experts, dedicated medical experts, and anyone attempting to protect a deteriorating environment… the word “no” applies only to those who oppose him, and “yes” is accorded to everyone who works for him. He has not had a good and workable idea since his 2.0 inauguration; he has established a new level of donors who support his ridiculous causes – like building a massive king’s ballroom with a footprint greater than the main White House – trading governmental favors for those donations.

He genuinely believes his bully tactics, at home and abroad, are both effective and have generated worldwide respect and admiration. In fact, respect for the United States is at an all-time low, the planet is rapidly designing workarounds, and even within the US, consistent polling shows that a clear majority of Americans label his first 2.0 year a failure. As midterms approach, he is grappling with how to rig the vote – through gerrymandering, culling voter rolls of likely Democrats and alleging fraud wherever he can. Yet there are signs that his rigid control of Republicans in Congress is eroding. There is a rippling awareness that Republicans running for Congress just might mirror lemmings headed for self-destruction.

There are a few signs of rebellion in the GOP ranks, aside from Republicans aware that the Epstein cover-up is wildly unpopular. For example, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers traveled to Copenhagen to assure Denmark that they supported its control of Greenland. At the same time, President Trump suggested he may use tariffs to pressure countries to go along with his annexation of the island. But nations are beginning not to fear his wrath or cater to his increasingly insane whim. Lex Harvey, writing for the January 15th CNN: “Several European NATO countries are deploying small numbers of military personnel to Greenland to participate in joint exercises with Denmark as US President Donald Trump ramps up his threats to forcibly annex the Arctic island… Trump’s declarations have thrown Europe’s decades-old, US-led security alliance into crisis, raising the prospect of NATO’s largest and most powerful member annexing the territory of another.

“Denmark, which is responsible for Greenland’s defense, has warned an attack on Greenland would all but end NATO, and announced on Wednesday [1/14] that it was expanding its military presence ‘in close cooperation with NATO allies.’” The nations involved include Germany, Sweden, France, Norway, the Netherlands and Finland. But the big winner in Trump’s global malfeasance is China… a customer for a sliver of Venezuelan oil. When Trump announced a 25% additional tariff on any nation that defied his intent to annex Greenland, it was French President Macron who declared that tariff completely unacceptable.

But as US farmers are smarting at the loss of the Chinese market for their goods, despite the $12 billion make-good Trump offered them, that sum represented roughly a third of their actual losses for the year. China even reported an almost $1 billion trade surplus, without the US, proof that the world is increasingly successful in separating from US economic dependence. China also made an impressive array of new trade agreements around the world, none of which involved the United States at any level. “China can afford to play the long game precisely because it can depend on the U.S. to create opportunities for it to do so, said Bates Gill, a senior fellow for Asian security with the National Bureau of Asian Research in Washington… ‘To the degree countries see the United States as more of a problem than a solution to the challenges they face, China will try to provide an alternative,’ he said.

“In areas such as providing development assistance, opening export markets and offering educational opportunities, for example, ‘that is already happening,’ Gill said. ‘Washington is handing over the script for China to use’… China has aggressively expanded into Latin America, including through enormous infrastructure projects. In Venezuela, for example, estimates of total Chinese investment, including loans and investment in the oil industry, range from $60 billion to $100 billion… China has also grown its trading ties with the Middle East, including taking advantage of U.S. sanctions on Iran to buy discounted oil.” Simon Elegant and Huiyee Chiew for the Washington Post, January 16th.

How long will it be for the US to be out of providing the reserve currency (the global metric for cross-border valuations? If Americans think prices are absurdly high now, without global acceptance for American financial infrastructure, they ain’t seen nuffin’ yet. For Americans planning travel to Europe any time soon, or towards most countries, I have one word of advice: don’t! By the way, Trump’s efforts to attack Fed Chair Jerome Powell and take control of the Fed haven’t made him popular with his buddies in corporate America, as the immediate plunge of out stock markets will attest.

I’m Peter Dekom, and this is one lesson Trump seems to want to learn the hard way, although his arrogance may cause irreversible damage to our economy… impacting all of us in a very bad way.

Ungovernable – A Perfect Opportunity for a Rising Dictator

 

Ungovernable – A Perfect Opportunity for a Rising Dictator

For Starters, 81-85% of Registered Republicans Still Back Trump

“Let me be very clear: There is no rift in the Republican Party… Donald Trump has had an iron grip on that Republican base for a long period of time, and it is the same iron grip that he had six months ago… Every so often, people are trying to say, ‘Oh, I spot these little rifts in the Republican base. Oh, oh, you know, they’re finally starting to break. They’re starting to break from Donald Trump.’ It ain’t happening.”

 CNN’s chief data analyst, Harry Enten, mid-January

If you read, listen to or watch mass media, Trump’s approval levels are under water in every major policy category, including brutal immigration program, efforts to take foreign territory (by economic or military force), an open declaration of war on Democrats (particularly vocal opponents), even ordinary protestors – using federal enforcement agencies (like ICE), the entire Department of Justice as his personal law firm with a retribution mandate, even the threat of using the military against civilians – high consumer prices, and the dreaded Epstein papers which have been delayed and covered up by his DOJ via massive redactions and petitions for delay against a clearly passed statute to the contrary. Any objective observer would count Trump and his supporters out as the midterms loom in November. But there seems to be a terrifying and fascinating socio-cultural explanation… that suggests otherwise.

While there are issues where “some” MAGA dissent is accepted – notably on the Epstein papers and moving to annex Greenland – Trump’s MAGA core remains fiercely loyal to him. There is even a hint of glee at Trump’s hardline against “woke” and “weak” Europe and his aggressive use of tariffs to force the rest of the world to heel. Whines from both sides of the aisle in Congress that Trump has usurped Congress’ Article I (of the US Constitution) power to set taxes and tariffs and declare war (with several supporting statutes), are often met with a smug arrogant MAGA disdain for the elites in Congress. 2020 “stolen election” conspiracies are rising once again. Even rumors that Europe is beginning to explore Chinese military hardware, to replace a mercurial and unstable United States reconfigured by Donald Trump, do not seem to faze MAGA voters.

Trump’s opponents, who see the fall of his hold on his base, consistently point to cracks in the uniformity of GOP support for all things Trump over a litany of issues. And that’s the problem with calling these cracks the beginning of the end of both Trumpism, and if there is a difference, the MAGA movement. But even where there is a new MAGA alternative – for example, represented by Majorie Taylor Greene’s support for “America First” – it’s about issues and not Trump himself. Trump represents an overwhelming cult of personality; Trump is the individual that MAGA, America First and the balance of the GOP have decided to follow with minimal challenge. While some Trumpers dislike his use of language and Tweet storms, wince at the scenes of ICE brutality against even US citizens, they see immigrants leaving and liberals being put in their place. Writing for January 13th Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg explains this surprisingly immutable loyalty:

“The theory of a MAGA rupture over Venezuela has a certain surface plausibility. It’s also completely contradicted by what masses of Trump’s backers are telling pollsters. Two days after the Maduro operation, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 65 percent of Republicans supported it, compared with just 6 percent who didn’t. Another poll, by The Washington Post, pegged that support at 74 percent. And a subsequent YouGov/CBS survey recorded even more striking results: 89 percent of Republicans backed Maduro’s ouster, and for self-described ‘MAGA Republicans,’ the number was 97 percent—a level of enthusiasm that would make even the election-rigging Maduro blush. Days after the [NY] Times quoted Bannon fretting about the GOP base’s alleged upset over Venezuela, the paper spoke to its own yearlong panel of Trump backers and reported, with characteristic understatement, that such ‘skepticism may not be shared by many rank-and-file Republican voters.’

“This sequence of events follows a familiar pattern. For months, major media outlets have run story after story about the alleged crack-up of Trump’s MAGA base, sourced to a specific set of elite right-wing influencers. These accounts have been widely shared and celebrated by liberal readers and pundits. And yet for months, that crack-up has failed to meaningfully materialize in polls and focus groups, and the allegations of MAGA infighting have borne little resemblance to the real-world trajectory of conservative politics, where Trump still reigns supreme.” The notion of “America strong” and governed from old world values (think of the Old West), enforces Trump’s aggressive moves against Greenland as positive. Even statistics reporting that since Trump’s reelection, higher costs have added over $1,600 to the average American family’s budget (CNN, January 20th), has failed to shake that MAGA loyalty.

Notwithstanding that voters as a whole register a 58% overall disapproval of Trump and his policies, the concentration of independents and Democrats representing that such statistics do not negate either red/blue state traditions or the fact that they have little or no sway over GOP primaries. And without Trump support at that primary level, most Republicans know that they cannot even rise to compete in a general election. And while a bipartisan congressional contingent traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark to assuage them that the US will not invade Greenland and there is no Western support for such an American annexation, the only voice that matters is a President slighted at not winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Some of the Silicon Valley oligarchs who couldn’t donate enough, even supporting inane causes like a completely vanity-driven new White House ballroom to ensure favorable government approvals, lucrative federal contracts and minimal regulation over their treasure artificial intelligence initiatives… are facing pushback from their own employees. FastCompany.com’s editorial head, Harry McCracken, observed some changes in these traditional GOP-friendly companies in his January 16th article: “The [tech] industry’s failure to mount the modest level of public pushback we saw during Trump 1.0 is not exactly a mystery. This time, the president and his appointees’ increased eagerness to use levers such as tariffs, antitrust approvals, Federal Communications Commission policy, and plain old lawsuits creates an even starker imbalance of power with companies that cross him. The emergence of generative AI as tech’s next big thing is another factor: Executives who want to influence federal policy, such as its AI Action Plan, have every incentive to avoid ticking off the president on other fronts.

“Tech giants may have concluded that their current approach to dealing with the administration—playing nice where tenable and ignoring one disaster after another—is working for them. It certainly seems to be working for Trump. But in the wake of the disaster unfolding in Minneapolis, there are signs the uneasy status quo might be slipping…

“CEOs of Big Tech companies, who have grown less accommodating of employee activism, may not be swayed by worker petitions. Brushing off their customers’ concerns is riskier. Unlike the business community, the American public doesn’t seem to be compartmentalizing its assessment of Trump. The president’s polling collapse has him underwater even on those issues he has embraced most tightly, including immigration, trade, and the economy.

“After so many years of playing to—in New York Times TV columnist James Poniewozik’s words—an audience of one, the tech industry might be slow to decide that the reputational damage is no longer worth it. At some point, however, even targeted buddying up to Trump could be intolerable to consumers, who have powerful ways to register their displeasure. One relevant data point: After Disney briefly pulled ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel off the air in September, seemingly at the behest of FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, cancellations of Disney+ and Hulu reportedly doubled.” Even Europe seems ready to stop appeasing and push back, at least ending the era of worthless Trump flattery. Could all this be way too little, way too late… and does Trump even care anymore?

I’m Peter Dekom, and appeasement of an autocrat, even when based on self-interest no matter the consequences, never ever works to generate the expected benefits even in the medium term.

Warmest Greetings

 

Warmest Greetings

The Climate Change You Can’t See is so Much Worse than What You Can

Climate change is impacted very significantly by lighter colored areas on the planet, which (like ice and snow) reflect heat away from the surface, and dark areas (the rest) that absorb that heat. As ice and snow melt, as glaciers disappear, as the Northwest Passage opens up, all that snow and ice is replaced by darker seas and land below… which absorbs heat. Thus, there comes a point – and we are just about there – where even slowing or eliminating greenhouse emissions generated by humans’ burning fossil fuel for our rising energy needs still becomes an internal and accelerating self-generating accelerant of climate change. We are moving to a point where not only must we need to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions but also have to find ways to eliminate carbon dioxide and methane gasses that are already in the atmosphere. Even stopping our emissions might be too little, too late. It becomes a vicious cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

With over 70% of the Earth’s surface covered by water, most of the damage due to greenhouse emissions is not readily visible. We know we are losing our coral reefs, that major species of marine life are dying out, and we can see animal sea life struggling to migrate, where they can, to water that is more compatible with the feeding and reproductive requirements. But most of us are not aware of the level of the absorbed energy that has already impacted our oceans. Rising seas, temperatures that warm water that is pulled into massive storms, intensifying the downpours from hurricanes, just as the weight of that extra water carried by those events slow the storm down… allowing it to sit over land mass longer, dumping so much more water onto the land. We’ve seen the floods, the new atmospheric rivers and the flooding and crushing storm surges eating away at our coastlines. This is old news, but it isn’t getting any better.

Writing for the January 9th, FastCompany.com, journalist Kristin Toussaint, examined recent studies to explain what is happening: “The figure on ocean warming comes from a new analysis published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, conducted by more than 50 scientists from 31 global research institutions… Ocean heat is important to pay attention to because it’s a barometer for climate change. The ocean acts as a heat sink for our emissions… The world’s oceans once again hit a record high temperature in 2025, storing more heat than during any previous year since modern recording began.

“That heat is so extreme that it’s calculated in zettajoules, a measurement equal to one sextillion joules. In 2025 alone, ocean heat increased 23 zettajoules—or 23,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy... That figure is daunting to understand. For comparison, the Hiroshima atomic bomb ‘Little Boy’ exploded with an energy of about 63,000,000,000,000 joules.

“That means in 2025, the amount of heat the oceans absorbed is equivalent to more than 365 million atomic bombs—or, as thermal sciences professor John Abraham says, ‘like 12 Hiroshima bombs being detonated each second, for every minute, hour, and day for the entire year.’…”

As climate-change denier, Donald Trump, pulls the United States out of every international body that has pledged to fight climate change (which he stupidly continues to label “a hoax”), as he cancels alternative energy and related research, amps up under his “drill baby, drill” mantra, even as there is already a global oil glut. “‘Trump cutting ties with the world’s oldest climate treaty is another despicable effort to let corporate fossil fuel interests run our government,’ Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. ‘It’s foolish and downright deadly for Trump to turn his back on the climate devastation ripping across the U.S. and the world.’

“The Trump administration has also recently cut hundreds of millions of dollars from climate energy research, including for the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory—which Trump actually renamed, in December, to the National Lab of the Rockies… These cuts will make the U.S. even more vulnerable to climate impacts, experts say.” Toussaint.

Meanwhile, China just stepped up to be the world leader in alternative energy research, systems, and deployment. China makes and sells more EV cars and trucks by far than do we… in fact, now exports more cars in general than does the United States and accounts for 74% of global research and investment in alternative energy.

When Donald Trump put the kibosh on US EV manufacturing incentives, Tesla sales, already falling, added to the $19 billion write-off that Ford took on their lower-cost EV models. Instead, Trump has committed the United States to take over Venezuelan oil – even as US companies are pushing back – and has requested a 50% increase in our military budget and instructed the Pentagon to prepare a detailed plan for the takeover of Greenland (more for minerals, including rare earths, and not oil)… literally pushing NATO to the brink of extinction. Assuming he is not stopped from such absurd goals, we will be an isolated global pariah, prices will begin to soar, we can expect serious retaliation from former allies, and Trump effectively pushes us away from Western Europe and into the arms of Vladimir Putin.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Trump’s abnormal obsession with oil, including building our military to be able to annex foreign lands with resources and assets we want, is literally insanity that could destabilize, if not destroy, this country.

Fear & Loathing Over AI vs Our AI-Driven Economy

 

Fear & Loathing Over AI vs Our AI-Driven Economy

There is a massive disconnect between what most Americans feel about the rise of AI in everyday life – a mixture of fear, distrust and resignation – and how corporate America views this exploding technology – invest, invest, invest. Even though the richest Americans own 90% of US publicly traded stocks… and 80%-90% of the massive rise in the major stock markets is directly attributable to AI-related investments… no one really knows where this will lead. China is focused on embedding its patented AI systems into virtually everything it manufactures, from massive ships to its cars to ordinary appliances to every manufacturing process it can find. American AI is focused on the home run, big picture, creating the unstoppable AI mega-technology growth model. Oh, so is China.

And one company, Nvidia, stands above the rest. Makers of the most valuable AI processing chips in the industry, that company is now valued at over four trillion dollars. The company has changed dramatically from what it was in the 1990s when this Silicon Valley company was founded: “Originally focused on GPUs [graphic user interface] for video gaming, Nvidia broadened their use into other markets, including artificial intelligence (AI), professional visualization, and supercomputing. The company's product lines include GeForce GPUs for gaming and creative workloads, and professional GPUs for edge computing, scientific research, and industrial applications. As of the first quarter of 2025, Nvidia held a 92% share of the discrete desktop and laptop GPU market.” Wikipedia. Over time, with massive outside investment and a series of strategic acquisitions, Nvidia became the tip of the AI spear, with super-advanced AI chips, strategic alliances and a market cap that made it the leader in global tech.

But even for recent Stanford comp sci engineering graduates, old tech skills were fading fast. Layoffs and closed doors, except for those with cutting edge knowledge, terrified an already disappointed set of Gen Z graduates. But AI is everywhere, and job cuts are already rocking the marketplace. Writing for the January 2nd The Morning (a NY Times feed), Evan Gorelick highlights our fears, even as Donald Trump has issued an executive order to keep state regulators out of the AI universe: “[A]rtificial intelligence has brought a whole new level of fear and loathing.

“It’s easy to have an opinion when the tech is everywhere. Chatbots are in kids’ classrooms. Autonomous agents rank résumés and conduct job interviews. Software companies use A.I. to write code. Lawyers use it to draft legal briefs. Experts say we’re adopting it faster than any other technology in history... As these tools spread, the ranks of skeptics are growing. Haters, too. Most Americans are concerned about A.I., polling shows. Fewer are excited. And four out of five of those optimists still say they’re alarmed… The freakout shows up everywhere… Here’s how to understand the animosity. A.I. is broad… A breakthrough in manufacturing may affect only manufacturing, but an A.I. breakthrough could transform manufacturing, physics, finance, music and dozens of other fields. So the backlash is just as sprawling, and there are various reasons for it:

• Jobs. Nearly three-quarters of Americans expect A.I. to slash jobs. At some companies, that’s already happening. Salesforce, a business software company, laid off 4,000 customer-support employees, citing A.I. automation. Amazon told employees the new efficiencies would shrink its work force.

• Trust. The inner workings of A.I. are a black box — even to the engineers who make it. People worry about its biases, its readiness to fabricate information and its ability to meaningfully shift public opinion and influence elections. And don’t forget all the A.I. slop flooding social media.

• Agency. People who never wanted A.I. are stuck with it. The fortunes of public pensions, retirement accounts and individual investments now depend on it. The companies that make it are responsible for most of the recent stock-market gains. (And if A.I. turns out to be a bubble, it could trigger a recession.)”

A world governed by self-teaching, hyper-accelerating exploding technology, one where many of those fears are absolutely justified, will undoubtedly provide many useful advances, even as our economic and political reality is disrupted beyond recognition. Our existing obsession with digital communications is bad enough, but with AI capable, near-human communications, with high risks of fakery, our individual problems loom large.

Our existing digital obsession is not exactly good for us as health reporter, Sumathi Reddy, writing for the January 1st Wall Street Journal, can attest: “A recent study in JAMA Network Open found that when young adults did a social-media detox for a week they had a reduction in anxiety and depression symptoms, as well as less insomnia… Dr. John Torous, senior author of the study and director of the division of digital psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, says previous research often relies on people self-reporting their screen time or social-media use, which can be unreliable. He wanted to do it differently.

“Here’s what his study did: About 400 people between the ages of 18 and 24 were instructed to use their phones normally for two weeks to get a baseline of screen time and other metrics. The third week they were asked to reduce their social-media use… About 80% of people were successful in reducing their social-media time. Average use went down from about two hours a day to 30 minutes… The participants were asked questions about their mood, activity and sleep daily. After a week of their social-media detox, participants on average had: a 25% reduction in depression symptoms, a 16% decline in anxiety and a 14% decrease in insomnia. There was no significant change in exercise or number of steps.” It seems highly likely that our lack of building appropriate guardrails and understanding the social impact of these changes augur badly for the physical, economic and mental health of us all.

I’m Peter Dekom, and those benefitting from a massive profits (potential and actual) generated by this acceleration of AI seem to have little or no concern for the 90% of us who will pay the price to make them so much richer.

Retribution Against Dems – Exaggerate-Fabricate, Invade, Provoke, Justify & Escalate

  So many domestic terrorists in usually calm Minneapolis

So-called non-lethal flashbangs, some with rubber pellets 

                                                                               

Retribution Against Dems: Exaggerate/Fabricate, Invade, Provoke, Justify & Escalate

“I am your retribution.” Donald Trump Campaign Pledge

“To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. and anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one — no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist — can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties. And the Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States, or against ICE officers, then they will face justice.” 

Senior White House advisor, Stephen Miller after Renee Good killing. Not true, however.

"It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing, and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense…. Based on the [video] clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE agents on a daily basis." 

Donald Trump after watching video of Renee Good shooting, and before he ordered 2000 more ICE agents into Minneapolis (their entire police force is 600 officers). He called Ms Good a "deranged lunatic."

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.” 

 Trump, on a January 15th social media post, threatening Minnesota, to invoke the above 1807 statute, empowering the military, in the event of rebellion or insurrection, to act as police, with primacy over state officials.

In determining the definition of what constitutes domestic terrorism, ICE and the Trump administration relied on a federal statute, 18 U.S.C. 2331(5), which states, in part, that domestic terrorism involves activities that “appear to be intended” to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” Teetering over the edge of unconstitutional vagueness, federal agencies are using this to justify their highly aggressive posture against peaceful protests, they love those “reasons” to shoot first and ask questions later. Our ICE agents train for an average of 47 days before being unleashed into the public. Animal control officers train for double that. And most metropolitan police take half a year or more.

Most police forces also train their officers never to stand in what they call the “kill zone” when dealing with suspect in a car… unless they have no choice: do not approach suspects from the front of a car. But even before Trump, immigration officers have purposely approached vehicles from the front to justify deadly force. U.S. Customs and Border Protection attempted to block a scathing 21-page report in 2014 that found agents had deliberately stepped in the path of cars to justify shooting at drivers and fired gunshots in frustration at individuals throwing rocks from the Mexican side of the border, as covered by Brian Bennett, writing for the Los Angeles Times, February. 27, 2014. “It is suspected that in many vehicle shooting cases, the subject driver was attempting to flee from the agents who intentionally put themselves into the exit path of the vehicle, thereby exposing themselves to additional risk and creating justification for the use of deadly force,” stated that report, which was commissioned more than a decade ago by CBP.

“’It was an act of domestic terrorism,’ Kristi Noem declared, following Wednesday’s [1/7] killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, by an ICE agent in a residential neighborhood of Minneapolis. With a straight face and no evident sense of shame, the head of Homeland Security added, ‘This goes to show the assaults that our ICE officers and law enforcement are under every single day.’ During the same press conference, she assured the public that ‘anyone who is a citizen of this country or is here legally, has nothing to fear.’” Ross Rosenfeld on TNR/Politics, January 8, 2026. False, Ms Noem, false.

Noem and senior ICE agents tell persons in cities where ICE agents are operating, even citizens, that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers may require documented proof of citizenship during enforcement operations…. “In every situation we are doing targeted enforcement,” said Noem to reporters outside the White House Thursday [1/15] in response to a reporter asking why some Americans have been asked to provide proof of citizenship in Minnesota. That “your papers” request, as conservative podcaster Joe Rogen described it, is reminiscent of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.

What does the ACLU say you should do if stopped by an Ice officer: “Citizens do not have a blanket legal duty to carry or show proof of citizenship on mere request, and they have the right to remain silent and to ask if they are free to leave; if an encounter escalates to a lawful detention, practical counsel and many rights-guides advise producing valid ID to establish citizenship while asserting the right to counsel and to challenge wrongful detention afterward.” ICE apparently does not consider a “Real ID” sufficient to prove citizenship, but fewer than half of US adults even have passports… and who carries a birth certificate… if they have one?

Invoking the Insurrection Act pulls away a lot of legal protections for citizens and non-citizens alike. It gives Trump incredible power, particularly when he has, of late, suggested that the mid-terms might need to be cancelled or the voting machines and ballot boxes confiscated for expected voter “fraud”… by his troops. Trump’s disapproval level has plunged consistently, negative on all his major initiatives, since March 12th… each policy category to double digits since that date, across all relevant polling entities. But the one of issues that more than doubles up on the next most negative rating is his handling of the Epstein scandal. All those “distractions” – military and immigration efforts – were insufficient to allow him to ignore that huge cover-up. Gas lighting, major armed efforts… makes Trump triple down as he quivers in fear for… himself.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I sure hope the American people get angry enough to stop this obvious repeal of American democracy.

 

Venezuela? Next: Greenland, MY Greenland

Once Trump announced in an interview that only his internal moral values would limit his right to deploy military and other actions overseas, I shuddered… as did a number of Republicans in Congress. His request to increase the military budget by 50% (to over $1.5 trillion) only made my condition that much worse: “The huge boost likely reflects how expensive some of Trump’s military ambitions are, from the Golden Dome air defense effort to his call for a new battleship design. Neither of those programs could be fully funded under current spending levels.

“The president provided few details in his post on Truth Social, other than to say the money would pay for his ‘Dream Military.’ Trump did suggest that tariff revenues could cover the increase, but even if he managed to circumvent Congress’ constitutionally mandated power over spending, existing tariff collections would still be several hundred billion short of what the president plans to ask for.

“While finding half-a-trillion dollars in new spending would prove difficult, Trump and some congressional Republicans appeared confident they could do so. The budget reached $1 trillion this year thanks to $150 billion in new money Congress voted to pour into Pentagon coffers via a reconciliation bill, although much of that will be spread out over the next five years on various long-term projects.

“Lawmakers have yet to complete a defense spending bill for this fiscal year, although a final agreement is expected to increase Trump’s budget request by several billion dollars… Some Republicans have long argued for significant annual increases in Pentagon funding, with a topline total of around 5 percent of GDP, up from the current 3.5 percent.” Paul McLeary, Connor O'Brien and Joe Gould, writing for the January 7th Politico.

After the Germany was humiliated from the concessions, limitations and reparations after WWII, Hitler rose to power based on his pledge to ignore his treaty commitments and build a huge new modern army to seek “Lebensraum” (basically land in which to expand). He attacked his opponents, took control of media (“propaganda”) and exploded that world with self-aggrandizing stories about himself and his dream for Germany. He blamed cadres of religious, racial and ethnic groups for the ails of Mother German, many of whom were soon targeted for extermination. Thoughts of parallels in contemporary America sent horrific chills down my back.

That picture above, labeling Trump as “acting president of Venezuela” was Trump’s own tailored announcement to the world that he was in charge of any land he chose. There was no regime change in Venezuela… only the removal of a dictator and a seizure of massive amounts of oil. But Trump’s demand for Lebensraum is now targeting a territory of a very friendly NATO partner (Denmark), one where the US has been able to operate, with military bases, for decades. And Trump use force to take Greenland, NATO and all other Western alliances would collapse… and we would look just like Russia in its annexation efforts over Ukraine.

But Greenland has defied easy extraction of its vast mineral wealth by a combination of rough terrain and horrible weather. That Trump could pull his off even if he did invade and conquer Greenland is a stretch, as Matt Egan, writing for the January 12th CNN, points out: “‘We need Greenland … It’s so strategic right now,’ Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One earlier this month.

“‘We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not. If we don’t do it the easy way, we’ll do it the hard way,’ Trump said Friday [1/9] at a press conference with oil executives… Although Trump has recently downplayed Greenland’s natural resources, his former national security adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News in 2024 that the administration’s focus on Greenland was ‘about critical minerals’ and ‘natural resources.’… But the reality is that Denmark’s ownership of Greenland is not what’s stopping the United States from tapping the island’s treasure trove. It’s the punishing Arctic environment.

“Researchers say it would be extremely difficult and expensive to extract Greenland’s minerals because many of the island’s mineral deposits are located in remote areas above the Arctic Circle, where there is a mile-thick polar ice sheet and darkness reigns much of the year… Not only that, but Greenland, a self-ruling territory of Denmark, lacks the infrastructure and manpower required to make this mining dream a reality.

“‘The idea of turning Greenland into America’s rare-earth factory is science fiction. It’s just completely bonkers,’ said Malte Humpert, founder and senior fellow at The Arctic Institute. ‘You might as well mine on the moon. In some respects, it’s worse than the moon.’.... Despite its name, approximately 80% of Greenland is covered with ice. And mineral extraction — or just about anything — in the Arctic can be five to 10 times more expensive than doing it elsewhere on the planet.”

Will he hit Iran to save all those protestors that are being killed… while pursuing a similar form of repression here, over obvious ICE excesses? A President who does not think we should not have elections should lead our country? Does a man who seems to be able sleep while standing up, who forgets his own words and is obsessed with planting his name (while erasing or minimizing others) on as many buildings and monuments he can and has serious mental and physical lapses… one who is putting the signature economic system of central bank independence, literally the financial backbone of our nation (the Federal Reserve) at risk – with serious consequences for our entire monetary and fiscal foundations (as the market plunge after his attack of Fed Chair Powell proves)… seem like the likely leader we need, telling the world he has no restraints on overseas actions, with an extra half trillion dollars in his military budget?

I’m Peter Dekom, and if Congress cannot stop his descent into egomaniacal stupidity, we may just be done as a democracy.

Oil in Retrograde

Oil in Retrograde

“A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies… The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined…. Instead, peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one’s own dominion. This gravely threatens the rule of law, which is the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence.” 

Pope Leo XIV addressing diplomatic representatives to the Vatican

“[The Venezuelan oil industry is] uninvestible… There are a number of legal and commercial frameworks that would have to be established to even understand what kind of returns we would get on the investment.” 

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods to Trump administration officials

Aside from his authoritarian goals, Donald Trump seems to be a leader mired in a different era, a neocolonialist making “might makes right decisions,” undoing most of the progress that made our economy explode in the post-WWII period. He seems to be living in an 18th and 19th century (or earlier era), a time of shifting alliances, never-ending conflict, in which monarchies and dictators sought to use their armies to conquer foes, garner access to natural resources at the expense of local people (often relying on slavery and other forms of cheap or forced labor). Even as demand for energy is rising fast, demand for fossil fuels is sinking faster. Frankly there’s an oil glut, even as so many nations (including the US) seem to be betting their future on oil and gas.

Reality is that China, strong only in never-clean-coal, has shifted full tilt towards alternative energy, where her BYD car EV carmaker is zooming past Tesla and where China accounts for 74% of the investment in the world’s alternative energy infrastructure and power sources. Ignoring the current glut of oil, and the soft price of a barrel of almost any category of petroleum, Trump might as well be a Middle Eastern monarch with his obsession over oil, a resource that even Saudi Arabia knows is not long for this world.

My Yale classmate, a brilliant economist, Daniel Yergin (vice chairman of S&P Global, author of “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power” and “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations”) describes it in the January 9th Wall Street Journal: “There’s certainly plenty of oil to be produced there. Venezuela holds the largest reserves in the world, more than Saudi Arabia and the U.S., and for decades was one of the stars of the oil world. But recent years have brought a crushing descent. Venezuela has been producing well under a million barrels a day—less than North Dakota—and accounts for less than 1% of world oil production.

“Estimates range widely for what it would cost to bring back the industry. One reasonable guess is $20 billion to boost Venezuela’s output to 1.5 million barrels a day from the 870,000 barrels it produced in November. To get back to the 3.4 million barrels a day of peak production at the end of the 1990s could cost $100 billion or even more, including new facilities, infrastructure and environmental remediation.

“But what will it take to persuade companies to make such big bets on Venezuela again? The country’s state-owned oil company, devastated by years of corruption and political turbulence, doesn’t have the money or technology for a recovery, let alone a massive upgrade. The international oil companies who do will want to be confident about security, regulation and the legal foundations of their investment, given that Venezuelans across the spectrum—including most of the 70% of the public that voted against Maduro in the last election—believe the country’s oil resources belong to the nation and are essential to the recovery of their battered economy. Any real plan for reviving Venezuela’s oil industry has to reckon with the political legacy of the country’s long, turbulent history with its petro riches.” And as the above Darren Woods quote suggests, Big Oil won’t make these investments without a huge guarantee from taxpayers, most of whom are wondering why Trump is so obsessed with conquering nations with essential natural resources (Venezuela and maybe Greenland), making the United States a global pariah.

Pillaging and looting seems far afield from global morality in the 21st century, but Trump does not appear to understand the harshest lessons of history nor where the vectors of progress were headed until he intervened. As Trump gathered executives from Big Oil on January 9th, he pushed hard for commitments, but, as Josh Boak and Aamer Madhani, writing for the January 10th Los Angeles Times/Associated press noted: “Trump, as he opened the meeting with oil industry executives, sought to assure them that they need not be skeptical of quickly investing in and, in some cases, returning to the South American country with a history of state asset seizures as well as ongoing U.S. sanctions and the current political uncertainty… ‘You have total safety,’ Trump told the executives. ‘You’re dealing with us directly and not dealing with Venezuela at all. We don’t want you to deal with Venezuela… Our giant oil companies will be spending at least $100 billion of their money, not the government’s money. They don’t need government money. But they need government protection.’” These executives were not biting.

Trump does not seem to be moved by obvious change once he has fixated. “A smooth-faced 41-year-old Donald Trump settled in before a live studio audience assembled for The Oprah Winfrey Show and held forth on how America should be getting a cut of Kuwaiti oil… ‘Kuwait is not paying us for all the oil they’re sending out,” said Trump, wearing a familiar solid red tie, as Oprah pressed him on his foreign policy views during the April 1988 interview. He complained that the Kuwaitis “live like kings” while the American military protected their tankers amid the Iraq-Iran War.... ‘Why aren’t they paying us 25% of what they’re making?’ Trump asked... In media interviews going back to the 1980s—long before he would dominate U.S. politics—Trump outlined his interest in the U.S. seizing oil from countries where Americans intervened. Now, in his second term as U.S. president, he’s making an audacious bid to turn his decadeslong fixation into a reality.” Wall Street Journal, January 8th. To Trump, having the ability to control a huge oil reserve gives him geopolitical power over Russia and Iran.

Writing for the January 10th The Guardian UK, Phillip Inman suggests that Russia isn’t collapsing anytime soon over oil sanctions: “Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Moscow has bought a huge secondhand fleet of more than 400 vessels to ship oil to Turkey, India and a host of other countries. That “shadow fleet” has shrunk since 2024 to about half its former capacity, forcing Russia to rely on European-insured vessels to ship its oil… If European financial centres – London chief among them – were to take a tougher line on what they insure, Russian oil revenues could be severely hit.

“Yet this analysis ignores the successful rewiring of the economy by Putin’s administration, which has proved more adept in its handling of domestic politics and the government’s finances than it did the military in the first three years of the war… Russia can, and should, be hurt financially by further sanctions. But European leaders and Ukraine’s valuable allies in the US Congress, who have done so much to prevent Trump from siding wholeheartedly with his kindred spirit Putin, should not delude themselves into thinking that the Russian economy is on the brink of collapse… While economic growth has slowed to a near standstill, the broader strategy resembles a medically induced coma – designed to insulate the patient from unwanted outside interference.”

There’s been a leadership change in Venezuela, but not a regime change (as long as the next set of leaders play Trump’s oil game). The country is as repressive as ever… and has never been a significant player in the US narcotics market.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I suspect that this ill-planned adventure will join the litany of international failures witnessed in recent memory as the US just acts without truly understanding the people of the subjugated nations… or the genuine economic costs inherent in their assumptions.