The Devil - Phased Array Radar

The list is so long, the criminally illegal, unconstitutional, immoral acts of nepotism that our President has orchestrated and begun to actualize using the advantage of the most powerful man in the world.  Few American villains have had the audacity to flaunt their aberrations seeking some kind of sordid appreciation.  There once was a time when government and corporate corruption was high brow and sought to cover its tracks creating immunity from prosecution.  If you are so old with nothing to look forward to but criminal prosecution and public humiliation and the loss of your empire for a second time, then your delusions evolve into biblical proportions.  Of all of it, the planned and coveted war time economy as the result of a not Congressionally approved personal mandate to reward his backers, the most intrusive and heinous breech of American civil rights is surveillance.  It is rife.  It began with the NSA and the search for terrorists at the behest of a planned attack on the twin towers by the lower Saudi royals.  Strategy, policy, and philosophy have been elusive to Congress, and it is because we have elected ignorant, incompetent, Yes Men like Linsdey Graham.  Spineless sycophants incapable of planning a dinner party.  They rather would take a private jet to a private island populated with underage adolescents who have been manipulated to provide sex for repugnant old men.  It is no wonder Washington and Congress have failed.  A social club of wealthy losers who disdain God and worship themselves, America has not seen such a plight.  We have had periods of strife and corruption, but the long arms of democracy reached out and strangled the proprietors of these Trusts, regulated corporate monopolies, and reeled in ensuing American Marxism.  It took a century to manifest itself again.  The Republican Party was clever to begin with and manipulated state Electoral Colleges to elect Donald Trump in 2016.  They continued with the attack on the United States Capital when Congress was trying to validate President Joe Biden's win.  Since his reelection in 2024 there has been little finesse.  It has been a full fledged attack on the United States from within the White House, Project 2025.  Fascists all of them.  Shotspotter.  Backpack radar systems that easily were reprogrammed to become nonlethal weapons.  Did the Russians do this, take an American made military and civilian microwave product and turn it on us?  It cost the intelligence community 14 million dollars to find out.  If we wanted to set things straight and bring a rapid resolution to government tyranny against the people, we would ban the phased array radar.  The legalization of these frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum by Bill Clinton created a nemesis so great we cannot recognize it.  It is invisible, but you can hear and feel it.  Your body can falter from it like sufferers of the Havana Syndrome.  The phased array radar is the ultimate culprit, the invader of humanity with little pencil beams that can be steered by shifting the phase of thousands of individual microwave transmitters.  It can be pointed at you inside your house with pinpoint accuracy from a variety of host platforms.  Like they soon discovered what began as surveillance quickly escalated into corporate and government terrorism against the people.  The entire scope of the intelligence community in one fell swoop must have been rendered moot.  All of that leg work, that cunning strategy of the CIA, FBI, and KGB all reduced to a handful of oligarchs, the same thing that is happening to the American economy.  BAN PHASED ARRAY RADAR, and that horribly invasive broad band wireless signal now on most commercial aircraft ensuring connectivity for its customers never again will penetrate the walls of your home create harm for you and your children. 

The Removal of the Destroyer

Still I am pecking away at my cumulative history of American Popular Music.  It is too broad in scope, like the history of Western music, to reasonably absorb all of it.  I didn't know this before I embarked on this journey.  It did begin with just Jass, and my study of Jazz acutely exposed to me how broad this music is.  Here is an example, if you were trying to teach Jazz History to college freshman.  First, there are many styles or genres of what we call jazz.  Most are very different from one another, so trying to find a thread between them is difficult.  It is a life long task, but I am getting closer.  In talking about "styles" of Jazz, which of itself is taboo, the easiest way to present it is to just expose the students to examples of this music being played in their own context.  If we only have audio recordings, it is very difficult to put a timeline on Jazz music.  Visual performances, like American Popular Music, are much more telling and communicative.  It is and was the purpose of this music, for you to experience it first hand and not through an iPod.  While the miniaturization of music play back systems have created convenience for users and economical affordability, older methods of music listening are more efficient.  I'll say that again.  Youtube has revolutionized music history with its breadth of information, footage, and history.  College level music classes have been retooled, because most everything of importance is available at the touch of a mouse on the internet.  Experiencing the music in its historical context is more important, and that means full body contact.  Hearing little audio bytes through earbuds is a spayed and neutered process of experiencing music.  It is not unlike the modern day state of sexuality in the United States.  We have strayed so far from the Creator's purpose, we have lost the essence of much of humanity.  I refuse to accept a woman's berating of a man, because he shows romantic or sexual interest.  We are directly in that time, a unique and unusual time when male predators are the headlines.  It is gross, unconscionable, and embarrassing that some of our most beloved American figures are sexual offenders and pedophiles.  That Bill Cosby would drug mostly white women seeking career advancement and sexually abuse them in front of his wife is criminal.  The list is long, so it has been a common practice in American society that influential powerful men feel they deserve sexual favors for free.  That we continue to dethrone American Presidents because of sexual impropriety is archaic.  When compared to enlightened nations, American beliefs and subsequent behaviors are primitive, often brutal, and violent.  We like to fight, but it seems we don't really like to f--k.  We have spent the last decade (someone) trying to confuse our children into not knowing and understanding their own gender and sexual identity.  Inasmuch as I do not disdain homosexuality, upon consistent reflection and observation I have found nothing positive about it at all.  While I am sure there are well adjusted homosexual couples who are not depraved and promiscuous, many are.  They lifestyle of rebellion they live often is based on hatred, vindictiveness, and malice.  They do not seek solidarity but separation and recognition of their difference.  It should be no surprise the majority of the population today misunderstand basic human sexuality and its dependence on gender differences.  That I am sexually attracted to a woman is no bad reflection on me.  God gave me a penis and a man's hormones.  Being attracted to and wanting to couple with women is my mission statement as a man from God.  Period.  That women choose rather to hide behind shells of hatred and maladjustment rather than learning how to deal with the gender difference is their shortcoming.  It's a tough pill, but life is tough.  There once was no shortcut.  Today we choose to hide and cower and suffer from our own inabilities to solve our own problems.  We just spew hatred and vitriol like the modern Republican Party.  We dredge up reasons to hate one another, when it is easier and more rewarding to live in peace.  I guess we do need fresh lessons from God about this.  So much music is based on romance, and today it is anachronistic.  As a modern society we do not understand romance as it once existed.  The internet has seen to that.  When you do open yourself up to the Great American Songbook, you must have some understanding of heterosexual romance.  The Sexual Revolution in America did change this perspective as did drugs and Rock 'n' Roll.  Interestingly I never equated Jazz music with romantic love.  Many aspects of Jazz deal with deeper issues including racism, discrimination, and war.  John Coltrane had a world perspective in his music as did Miles Davis.  When you are playing about survival, it is a different story than simple romance.  There are genres under the blanket of the word Jazz that explore and actualize different goals.  These goals loosely can translate to "aesthetic" or feeling.  What are you trying to say, or create, or communicate to others?  One example is the genre of Keith Jarrett and Jan Gabarek with strings.  Jarrett has written many tuneful, almost gospel, singing melodies that have a feeling of church.  The industry chosen title for their style was championed by the record label ECM in Scandinavia.  It evolved into "New Age."  There was an undercurrent of worship in a large cathedral with those acoustics providing a depth of sacred feeling in the secular music.  This formula, or God versus the Devil, is common in quality American music such as the Blues.  The Pentecostal worship service, with its depth of feeling and exuberance to express such, found its way from the sanctuary to the jook joints.  Not all Jazz recognizes or acknowledges overt spirituality, and some Early Jazz was a vehicle for fornication.  I think it is most accurate to categorize a music by the feeling it creates.  Aaron Copland would disagree.  If you compared this ECM music and its feeling to a Thelonious Monk small group with his angular, pointed, modern compositions, the difference would be obvious.  Monk used Pointillism in his piano stylings, a much more modern approach to the piano than his immediate predecessors.  Similarly Gunther Schuller created "Third Stream" jazz that used elements of symphonic music.  Charles Mingus is a worthy example of this genre, and this combination changed the feeling of the music from possible romance, sexual activity, or relaxation to something deeper such as loss or the contemplation of morality.  None of this is about what I wanted to blog tonight.  What is on my mind is the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.  I found this agency online, and for a while I was receiving email updates about their activity.  After trying to contact some of their agents, I quickly realized this organization has suffered the same fate as most other federal agencies under the Trump Administration.  No longer do they strive in their own mission statements.  Instead they have been taken over by stooges who advance the profits of their friends.  In the recent lawsuit by Cumberland Country against Chemours and DuPont, their rebuttal was, "No one but this department and the state can bring grievances against us."  This has shielded them from litigation until now, when a three judge panel ruled otherwise.  The Department of Environmental Quality is and was just a political tool to protect corporate America.  It is a farce, and it is the kind of farce Phil Berger embraced.  His main impetus as the Senate President Pro Tempore was to do for his friends, not the people of North Carolina.  There is no need to capsulize today's news.  It's absurdity is self explanatory.  The defense industry wants war as does other facets of corporate America.  Who benefited the most from the Covid outbreak, when we all were sheltered in place at home?  Jeff Bezos and his Amazon.  World politics is about the bottom line, not people.  We have more than one war criminal in Washington, and one of them blatantly attacked our own working government.  We reelected him President.  What does this say about our own people?  It says that most of us are not Americans at all.  We are war mongering extremists who have been indoctrinated by something else.  We want to devolve to the tribalism of Islamic Extremism, where we do not have minds enough to figure out what to do with our lives but fight one another.  It is a massive failure of the educational system, and it has been achieved by our own governments with leaders such as Phil Berger.  The immediate exploitation of American assets is their only goal.  Their ship is sinking, so why not take down the world with it?  Are we going to let a senile and deranged President achieve the same thing, invoke world war to destroy the world for kicks?  Any prudent nation would find a way to remove this man from office.  

The Barbs of Early Jass

My friend and mentor in jazz, George William (Bubba) Jay Knowles had very specific interests and opinions about this swing based improvisatory music.  If I quote him directly, "There are two things I don't.  They are singers and guitar players."  (You better not try to talk to the bass player while playing a tune on a set.  You might lose your job.)  Miles Davis often said his father was an oral surgeon and he never wanted for anything, but his overt voice in the jazz aesthetic could be a metaphor for melancholy.  Evidently Miles didn't equate this affliction with the Blues.  American racism saw him clubbed over the head with a knight stick while standing in front of the club he  was playing.  They took him to jail, much like ICE is "detaining" people of color.  The color of your skin was a barrier early Americans had trouble with.  White is right.  Not.  I tried to argue with Jay a few times about his opinionated views, but it was pointless.  It took me three more decades and watching Donald Trump be elected President twice to understand many people are irrational, and often they talk talk that doesn't coincide with their actions.  I have learned it is important to let people talk and express themselves, even if it is offensive to you.  I learned from my Uncle, Dr. Peter Reichle, that adults learn not by you telling them something, but from seeing something often enough they came to their own conclusion about it.  It takes time and reinforcement to make adult change their opinions.  That would explain the grandmaster blackmailer and now senile leader of the free world.  Perhaps $5.00 a gallon gas prices will lead them to vote another way come the November midterm elections.  I understood his point of view, my friend Bubba Knowles.  He was a jazz purist and had most issues of Downbeat magazine.  His CD collection was vast and covered several walls including music he had uploaded off the internet.  He didn't like "singers," and he didn't like guitar players.  I knew a little bit about jazz vocalists back in 1988 and not much about jazz guitarists.  I recognized the names Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, Jim Hall, Joe Pass, and George Benson.  That was about it.  Guitar and the playing of the guitar is an approach unto its own in the world of jazz.  Probably the most notable example of jazz guitar is with Oscar Peterson when he and Ray Brown didn't need a drummer.  Jim Hall fulfilled the responsibility of a drummer in this trio assuming the rhythm role.  It is similar to Freddie Green accompanying Count Basie all those years in his big band but never taking a solo.  Today if I had to have an opinion about jazz guitar, I would say George Benson and Kenny Burrell appeal to me most.  Although George is from a later era, he like Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin easily and aptly could synthesize past styles and appeal to modern sensibilities.  In a more pure jazz vein, Kenny Burrell easily could shed those feathers and embark on the journey of Soul Jazz and rock with organists like Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff.  In 1988 Joe Pass was my favorite acoustic guitarist playing standards in a virtuosic style.  If I had to chose a guitarist in the fusion genre, it would be Larry Carlton.  Jay liked none of them, but he did like organists on the B-3.  Even as I have learned how important the early vocalists were for many reasons, Jay would never change his opinion.  Just as Dr. Ted McDaniel queried me on my General Exams in 1996, it has taken me this long to develop a comprehensive understanding of singing in the jazz vernacular.  The most important concept of jazz singing is, until it began to develop, the only singing the world heard was European-based art music.  John Phillip Sousa and Enrico Caruso were the best selling artists of the turn of the century.  The concept of the American Popular Song and its realization were new artistic developments.  That there could be information or expression "between the notes" was a new concept in the singing of art songs or in opera.  The "Blues" was influential as was slavery, because a new kind of expression was actualized to convey these deeper feelings.  The roots were in folk musics, and Scot Irish ballads were a large influence all ready expressing a blues of their own.  It may be that financially fortunate members of societies may not have been exposed to, forced to indulge in, or recognize and understand the depth of feeling of people truly struggling for existence.  Miles would say he never had the blues, but in reality he was a walking archetype of an individual consumed with heavy and often personally oppressive sentiments.  He was playing a club in Harlem and standing on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette on a break when a policeman told him to move along.  He explained he was headlining the club behind him, but the racist cop bludgeoned him on the head and took him to jail because he was black.  If you don't get the Blues from that experience, what would it take?  Being enslaved I would think.  Necessarily black slave culture was surprisingly different than white culture, and over time slave owners began to understand and sometimes appreciate this more African-influenced approach to living.  I would have to digress that George Williams Knowles' opinion about singers and guitar players defied logic, in that the human voice is the quintessential musical instrument.  Perhaps he was underwhelmed by the singing aesthetic of late 1980's in popular culture America.  Many trained and talented jazz musicians might be so judgemental as to deny Louis Armstrong the title "The Real King of Jazz."  After careful study I love the Paul Whiteman Orchestra.  I find nothing condescending or derogatory about this ensemble, its players or arrangements.  On the contrary I find this music, like Fletcher Henderson and Benny Moten, extremely forward thinking, artistic, clever, and entertaining.  That Early Jazz was arranged music, music written with a pen by an astute arranger, every note written out and intended for a particular intelligent audience, may be the irony or controversy.  Our modern interpretation of Jazz is that it mainly is improvisatory music.  Early Jazz was not, although Louis Armstrong created the mold that improvisation was cast from improvising choruses in Joe King Oliver's band as the patient and often bored second trumpeter.  They played written out tunes, often in a march form with different strains, and Satchmo would paraphrase the strict metronomic melody with a personal interpretation that mimicked a theme and variations.  He was interjecting his own soul into a somewhat institutional rendering of banjo music stemming from Vaudeville and the practice of minstrelsy.  Jazz on most occasions was performed for people with money, therefore society, so a certain code of conduct was in place.  It would be Jelly Roll Morton who developed Early Jazz in and for a more degenerate low income audience.  

Jazz Icons

In my study of jazz music, which began officially in 1988 after I graduated from the University of South Carolina with a Master of Music degree in Jazz and Commercial Music, it has taken over three decades to get near a historical lineage of the evolution of Jazz.  When I took my General Exams at Ohio State University, Dr. Ted McDaniel asked me a question so complex about the evolution of jazz it has taken me thirty years just to come to understand the question.  Needless to say the art form of Jazz is complex and far reaching.  One must live it to understand from the inside out.  I learned the bulk of jazz history from my friend and geru Jay Knowles.  To this day he is the most exceptional jazz scholar ever I have encountered, and that is because he loved the music.  Two years with him as a guide, and I waded through the theoretical aspect of jazz music, meaning it was a study of jazz theory.  I all ready new most of it, because I was a Graduate Teaching Associate.  With the exception of the Lydian Chromatic Concept, a theoretical framework of jazz harmony based upon the Lydian Augmented scale or ascending melodic minor scale, I understood most concepts of jazz melody and harmony.  Completing the coursework for a doctorate of musical arts in composition rounded out my knowledge of music composition.  There were two things Ted McDaniel asked me in the doctoral exam.  One, was the evolution of jazz just a journey culminating in the Avant Garde, and two, talk about the jazz vocalists.  I knew the major figures in jazz, which were Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Joe Williams and a few more.  I never had done an exhaustive study of the vocalists like I had done for instrumental jazz with Jay Knowles.  As it turns out a thorough study of Miles Davis from his first recording with Rubberlegs Williams to the end was a solid base for understanding most jazz.  I did not pass these General Exams the first time I took them, and that was circa 1996.  After completing all of this coursework I had to stop at OSU to have cornea transplants in both eyes.  Only today do I feel I am getting close to the level of proficiency needed to be a jazz scholar.  It takes time, so it is a lifelong pursuit.  If I were teaching again, to make it interesting to students I would come up with unconventional references that would connect with a younger modern generation of students.  Once I was good at this, being "hip."  If we try to understand the music from within, it is rife with sorrow and disappointment.  We need a more light-hearted way to approach the music, understand it, and appreciate it for what it has to offer the human race.  It is substantial, but it is complicated.  I could start with a humorous aside that I got transferred off my first Carnival cruise ship orchestra position because I tried to talk to the bass player during a tune.  He was so surprised and offended, Kirwin Brown, that he stopped playing, put his bass down, yelled at me, and walked off the stage.  The band followed him and refused to finish the set saying I was an offensive homophobe.  I pleaded with them not do make this stand and finished the set solo piano playing bass with my left hand on a keyboard.  I got the written warning.  This is ship politics.  In my discussion with the Musical Director, I pointed out that everyone in the band that walked off the stage and refused to play also merited a written warning for refusing to perform their scheduled duties.  They were not happy about this, and for some reason it was a surprise.  All of this for trying to communicate verbally while playing a jazz set.  The drummer, Donald Brown, who often just stopped playing to let the piano player take the lead, said our jazz performance was sacred and no words should be required.  They highly were offended that I tried to talk to them as we played.  Can you imagine being on stage in the band, and not being able to talk to them?  Perhaps what is the next tune?  Shall we do a medley?  Let's cut this tune short.  Lets go to double time.  Tempers and egos were high on the Carnival Destiny, but with less than 24 hours notice I was told I was being transferred to the Carnival Paradise where I had to quit smoking cold turkey.  It wasn't much later that Mr. Brown blew his top again and was fired and put off the ship in Aruba to find his own way home.  Jazz is a lifelong study, and it is good that it is that way.  The Three B's, trumpeters that were put out of commission because of alcoholism.  Buddy Bolden, Bix Beiderbecke, and Bunny Berigan.  It is best not to be a BB in the Jazz Age.  You don't want your name beginning with B for your first and last name, and you don't talk to the bass player while playing during a set.  I made it a point in the last few years while looking after my mother to round out my incomplete knowledge of jazz vocalists, and I have with the help of Youtube.  In trying to answer the question put to Facebook users by my former student and doctor of music Robert Gardener, this is upon what I arrived.  1.  Louis Armstrong.  2.  Lester Young.  3.  Ella Fitzgerald.  4.  Miles Davis.  5.  Fats Waller.  Many would be alarmed and surprised I didn't include John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, or Count Basie, all of which who were extremely influential to the art of Jazz.  If you only could pick five artists who most shaped Jazz music over the course of a century, these are my picks.  The reason is, much like a college teacher, they do many things.  Louis Armstrong was the most substantial model of jazz being a virtuosic trumpet soloist and improviser, knowing and singing in his characteristic communicative tone almost the entirety of the Great American Songbook, and doing all of this without being able to read music.  He also transected Early Jazz and Swing smoothing out the earlier ricky tick style and codifying swing rhythm or feel.  The study of jazz saxophonists is almost as broad as the study of all jazz.  While Sydney Bechet is notable in the earlier years. the approach of Lester Young is phenomenally unique in its tender and expressive phrasing of melodies.  Many others used the same approach, but Lester was the original.  The Prez.  Ella Fitzgerald covered decades with her vocal prowess easily scat singing bebop, covering pop tunes with a girlish voice in her mid teens with Chick Webb, or belting Rock tunes with a dance band when necessary.  She did it all.  Miles can be credited with creating three distinct styles of jazz including Cool, Modal, and Fusion.  No other artist has this diversity as a band leader.  From the perspective of the keyboard, the study of jazz piano also is its own anthology.  While Art Tatum often is recognized as the progenitor of early jazz piano, Fats Waller was a prolific composer, vocalist, stride pianist, and entertainer.  He pioneered the vocal style of carrying on a conversation with multiple people while singing alone answering himself often in the opposite gender.  He covered all the bases alone.  While there are many more influential jazz artists who round out the aesthetic such as Eric Dolphy and Weather Report, if we are attempting to blanket the entirety of jazz and retain its most quintessential elements, these five artists are a good start.  

The Saxophone of King Curtis

 The suspense is tangible.  Why?  "Will they stay, will they go?"  The 82nd Airborne of course.  The news is... well honest.  It must be that in the history of American Popular Music, the guy with the biggest one wins.  Those who solicit and receive the recording rights to a particular song are more financially successful than others.  There are songs inherently that are more communicative and thus successful than others.  During the Era of Tin Pan Alley, something America does not remember or champion, songwriting was a highly regarded and lucrative craft.  This was when music was an everyday part of American life.  It was not that long ago the same was true.  When I was in high school music was still big.  That music scene was promulgated by radio play.  There was a need for good music, because music is what drew listeners to the dials of their radios.  It was not ads.  We would not tune it to listen to a company hawk its products at us.  We did tune in to hear successful bands play meaningful music.  Similarly we would tune into television to watch communicative programs, whether drama, comedy, or the news and humbly absorb sales pitches for various American products.  Geritol.  Flour.  These things did respond to human needs rather than excess, like fifty-thousand dollar pick up trucks.  I am listening to the artist King Curtis, who is a saxophonist from the mid 1900's.  I had never heard his name before, but I had heard his tracks or songs.  I am a jazz educator, although I do not actively teach anymore.  I continue to teach myself and broaden my knowledge base.  I have learned more about jazz in the last few years from the historical perspective because of Youtube.  King Curtis chose to play R&B and Soul as well as being a substantial jazz musician.  The radio airplay from the popular forms of American music meant more financial reward.  It makes me appreciate the great jazz saxophonist even more.  Most of them were not financially successful.  Instead they were artists who developed one of America's few true art forms, Jazz.  I have a former student who became a doctor of music and taught jazz studies in South Carolina.  He posted a challenge to name the top ten most influential jazz artists.  As I have learned this is an impossibility.  I have taken it upon myself to try to synthesize the history of American Popular Music.  Wow!  I have been successful with Jazz, and the culmination of this knowledge lies in four DVDs each covering different genres of jazz music.  They are grouped so to provide a pleasant and satisfying listening experience.  If music is not pleasant and listenable, no one will pay attention.  The substance of the history of American Popular Music is almost overwhelming.  It is like Donald Jay Grout trying to pack the history of Western Music into one volume.  It is impossible.  That book is useless, although it may still be in use in colleges and universities today.  There is so much diverse information that spans centuries and national boundaries, the Grout text only could serve as a broad outline of Western music history.  This is what it is.  Like American Popular Music there are so many genres, a different course is needed for each.  French Grand Opera.  Ballet.  The String Quartet.  It is absurd to try to pack it all into one study, but American Popular Music is only one country and one century.  There is music pre1900, and it is important.  If we had to discipline ourselves then 1900 is a logical place to pic up.  "The Jazz Age."  The absurdity all ready present itself.  What was happening in America was affected by Western music, or what I like to call European-based orchestral and chamber music.  Europe of itself is a rich pallet of musical culture, because all of these languages and customs were close together.  Italian, French, German, and Russian.  That is the tip of the iceberg.  Perhaps a study of each country would be best for music study.  I discovered King Curtis as being the prominent solo saxophone voice of American Popular Music.  Like much music I study, the most important and memorable for me is mined from Youtube with my own curiosity and sweat.  I am picky about my music.  The only way I can leave the television on is if I am ambulant in the house working on other things, and it is just background noise.  If I do try to watch TV, it is very difficult.  The main reason would be  I do not have a pay television service.  We have had both Spectrum and DirectTV.  DirectTV was a better product, but they raised their prices after two years and lost several important local stations.  WNCN, channel 17.  When my mother died I cancelled the Spectrum service and mailed in my boxes.  Never will I regret it.  Over-the-air television does provide quite a few channels, and the best of these broadcast old television shows.  These shows were professionally produced and had quality sound reproduction, costuming, and acting.  They were conceived during the Golden Age of Television.  Local television has become a different thing.  King Curtis, when I discovered him on Youtube, was what must have been the original Smooth Jazz saxophonist.  Grover Washington would be more well known, but King Curtis is earlier.  The recording I found was exemplary, because he was replacing the vocal on top ten songs.  One of these was "Ode to Billy Joe."  The backing tracks are almost the same as the originals, so his saxophone sound steps into the spotlight.  This supports my first premise, that those who solicit and acquire the rights to the best songs are the most successful.  I decided to buy a box set, because I liked him so much.  To my surprise the 4 CD box set is nothing like what I had discovered.  It is early Rock 'n' Roll, so the sophisticated backing tracks are missing.  No strings and no recognizable songs.  It is representative of the true task of the songwriting contingency.  There are hundreds of thousands of forgettable songs published, and you can find them in different genres.  The Great American Songbook is the pinnacle of songwriting, so only the best songs become "standards."  The King Curtis box set is like many blues artists trying for success.  There are songs galore, but you will remember none of them.  You will remember the successful ones which have made it to the top and have received distribution and airplay.  For an artist to become successful, it takes a variety of ingredients including marketing.  King Curtis will still remain noteworthy in my lineage, but most of the songs in this box set are novelty songs or selling the energy of early vocal Rock 'n' Roll.  Interestingly there is a genre of itself that defines these crossover saxophone instrumentals.  What is it?  Lounge music may be the closet title I can think of.  It makes notable use of the Hammond organ as a solo voice, not in the jazz style.  It is aggressive, percussive, and kitschy, kind of like a Las Vegas sign.  As for the news today there has been no room for false information.  Our reality is surreal enough.  In a nutshell consumer prices remain inflated, and because of the President's attack on Iran, our gas now costs $1.00 more a gallon.  That has been the interesting thing about Donald Trump's presidency, is that gas prices have remained steady at about $2.50 a gallon.  "No new wars!"  The American people are being fucked.  Donald Trump is a murderer.  The death toll has risen to 200 Americans, who would be alive if not for this ludicrous action of attacking Iran.  He is killing Americans and raising prices.  America now will enter the history books with its first murderous dictator.  The irony is we elected him. 

The Backpack Programmable Phased Array Radar Weapon

 A solid piece of milled aluminum is the skeleton of a Macbook Pro.  There is a reason why Apple is Apple, but Apple is not Apple anymore.  Apple now is run by the former leader of Hewlett Packard.  The visionary products that Apple is known for are gone, but they are not forgotten.  It takes a few steps back to get this into focus.  My life has been on another tangent for ten years, so the things that were important to me, and which I studied have taken a backseat.  Only now after the death of both parents, getting closure on the estate, and pulling my head above water are they returning, these things of interest.  It shows 90 degrees on my backyard thermometer, and it is March 11.  How is this possible, record breaking heat in Winter?  One of my past girlfriends used to call me "Dark Cloud."  It was because I drank too much bourbon at night, and had a hangover the next morning.  In Columbus bourbon was necessary.  I tried existing on the wagon for a short time, and it was miserable.  I would get up sober and try to approach the day like any other working citizen.  My eyes hurt, it was cold, and there was no life.  I would drive around in my Toyota Tercel wagon, and it felt like Halifax, Nova Scotia.  It was after a devoted study that I discovered why.  Once you understand you can't go back.  It will never evade you.  Always this insurmountable, invisible, antagonistic force will be with you, Luke.  It is not good.  Anything that usurps the needs of humans is bad.  There will be no Borg.  There will be no Tet.  There will be no cyber system that controls the world and tries to kill humans.  Instead the Earth will perish in hellfire flames as predicted in the Bible.  The rest is science fiction.  It is speculation.  It is a bubble.  It is hyperbole.  It by pure will is meant to manipulate the financial markets to earn money for the all ready wealthy.  Money only can be spent by humans.  Maybe they do think they can live on Mars.  Why would one want to?  This thing, this stealth destructive force that no one can overcome, has become the tool of evil.  I think perhaps it did not begin this way.  It began as an industry trying to reinvent itself after the verge of bankruptcy. "Breaker breaker, one nine!"  It  was forty years ago the trucking industry was the backbone of American commerce.  A culture arose, and the ambulant freedom of the open road proved lucrative.  It was one chapter of America, a rebellious, headstrong, cavalier Scot-Irish spirit that took no prisoners.  I am exaggerating, but trucking was for the individual.  It relied upon drivers with strong wills and a dedicated work ethic.  It was so effective, it nearly bankrupted railroads.  John Snow  resurrected freight rail by creating his CSX-T, the merger of the Chessie system with Seaboard Coastline.  The advent of AC traction around 1990 has been the Pandora's Box of railroading.  Most will say the invention of AC traction was the cornerstone of future freight wealth.  Specifically the ES44AC locomotive has been selected as one locomotive that changed railroading for the better.  The jury is  out on this one, but it proved financially rewarding for the railroads.  Over the last three decades Norfolk Southern tried to paint the use of these locomotives green. The paint job on a freight locomotive will not not minimize its inevitable effect on human physiology.  The GP-38 may be the best example of trying to paint a horse.  It may seem audibly quiet, but its 16 cylinder two stroke prime mover does not adhere to EPA tier standards and emits 90% more harmful micro particles than modern locomotives.  RJ Corman, like many smaller railroads not capable of spending millions on motive power, has embraced the SD-40 which has the same 645 engine.  All of these older and possibly rebuilt dinosaurs pollute at the levels they did when they were built in the 1960's; they are operating under the radar of a grossly downgraded environmental policy kneecapped by the Trump Administration.  It belies logic how this President is not helping the American people.  With his international business relationships comes an allegiance to foreign influences, who are his benefactors.  It may be surprising, but America no longer is not in the loop.  The implementation of AC traction has harmed many people in a way not dissimilar to phased array radar.  "Sixty Minutes" reported recently undercover Department of Homeland Security agents were able to purchase, for 15 million dollars, a Russian-made, portable, microwave weapon in 2024.  The details were scant, but this scenario lent itself to a more plausible conclusion.  How would it be possible to manufacture a miniature microwave weapon that would fit in a backpack?  The Double Jeopardy answer says, it all ready has been made.  Spotter.  The operative terminology that fuels most technology today, the touted holy grail, is phased array radar.  Like AC traction words won't mean much.  Phased Array Radar, like the HAARP facility in Alaska, is radar unlike any previous radar.  It relies upon arrays of transmitters rather than one and software to steer the beam of microwaves.  Software phase shifting the array steers transmitted microwave pencil beams, which can be aimed specifically at very small areas including people.  This all ready  exists in the United States as a commercial product.  Spotter's website specifically advertises broad range use of its mobile radar for other applications.  If undercover agents paid 15 million for a Russian product, they overpaid.  Because the Central Intelligence Agency has chosen to mock victims suffering from the effects of this technology, it must be discerned America all ready has a weapon.  It is no different than Covid.  The smoke and mirrors enveloping Washington, DC and our elected leaders is a nightmare.  Like  HAARP in Alaska (which covertly was developed for long range radio communications with Navy submarines) phased array radar may have been developed on the up and up.  With use and testing have the negative effects of this technology come to light.  The rail industry may not have known how invasive the remnants of AC traction were, but they should now.  Suddenly you have not only a money-making tool but a weapon that can control the masses.  This combination is evil, and America has proven we are not responsible enough to regulate and limit these capabilities.  If you give little George Washington an axe, he will cut down the cherry tree.  If you give industry and Washington control over the American economy and people, they will abuse it.  With God eliminated from the equation, Satan is free to devastate Earth.  

The Unfortunate Demise of Jeffrey Epstein

 If any one thing suggested psychiatric weakness it is irrationality or a lack of perspective.  When I was a child, there was one sure way I would learn.  If I made a mistake and was punished, then that punitive scenario where I was in the doghouse evoked an awareness in my consciousness that willed me never to let that happen again.  We could call it the paddle or the spanking.  This is a much contested action in our current climate of Political Correctness, an era where we have been willing to let our children stray to a point of self destruction.  Tough love is more a part of nostalgic or historic American life, when a child had to walk five miles to school and back each day.  Basically it was a moral lesson or kind of Aesop's Fable, a miniature Star Trek or Andy Griffith episode, that taught you something.  Then what it taught was a moral or ethical lesson about treating one's fellow man as yourself.  In a nutshell we were aware of a code of living, a Christian ethic or ethos shaped by the Ten Commandments, that attempted to make our lives better by tempering our animal instincts.  If we were going to live on this planet together in societies, then we needed to behave a particular way.  Abstractly politics once represented this same idea.  Diplomacy uses intellect and wisdom mined from experience to dispel human conflict.  The underlying premise is man needs or requires peace and serenity to survive.  Peace ensures that our planet and the human race may survive aside from a God-created cataclysmic disaster.  The crucial postulate is man desires peace rather than conflict or war.  Economics have changed that perspective, and the intense lure of wealth or the power of the dollar to disguise suffering and create a bubble of bliss has necessitated conflict and war.  It would seem we as a nation have lost the ability to create an economy based on human need.  Human need would in most circumstance not include murder, if we had souls.  The souls with which we are born and are nurtured in childhood have been undermined.  Without our own personal awareness we have succumbed to temptation, a universal vice described in the Bible and Jesus' teachings.  Temptation and addiction have consumed American life.  God forgives, and those who seek redemption can enter the kingdom of heaven.  We are weak, and a force as strong as God and perhaps more persuasive has consumed our lives.  It is call Evil.  Satan or the devil only manifests himself through human form, and the elected regime we have today in America clearly is an example of this Evil.  It is rife with the trappings of mental illness, irrational thought and behavior, and the most devastating, a serpent-like ability to speak and mold to any situation promoting one's own agenda whether ethical or not.  Examples of this have emerged in our current and recently elected leaders.  After having received punishment as a child, certain things have solidified in my own code of conduct.  For me it was trusting others' advice.  Anytime I chose to do this and made a decision based upon what someone else suggested, I was bitten in the arse.  The conscious decision to follow someone else's suggestion resulted in a failure.  I learned to follow my own instincts and reflective decisions.  You know yourself best.  As an adult I have learned a variant route.  I will listen to others' opinions and experiences, because often I will learn something I did not know; I must separate my personal choice and process from their opinion.  The most disturbing and disruptive example of Evil today, other than the recent unconstitutional attacks on Venezuela and Iran circumventing Congresses' approval, is the murder of Jeffrey Epstein.  It should become clear to us, the American people, that those in power and possibly our elected leaders, have committed murder.  Not murder under the cloak of war, casualties that can be ascribed to some greater cause (whether fraudulent or not), but murder to conceal one's own crimes akin to the slaying of Jamal Kashoggi.  The death of Jeffrey Epstein is an example of such an egregious act.  As evidence continues to surface exposing a much greater atrocity, a blackmail ring connecting Russia with the United States, the plausibility of a murder to disguise such a scheme arises.  Epstein's death in a prison cell is similar to Vladimir Putin's blatant assassinations of undesirable state participants or rebels.  In Communist nations, such as Russian, China, and Iran, dissent or protest is met with slaughter.  These totalitarian regimes do not allow personal freedom nor freedom of speech.  Disagreement and recalcitrance to the state results in death.  Jeffry Epstein was murdered to cover up these high crimes, and he was murdered by those in power.  In all probability he was murdered by Donald Trump himself.  One of Donald Trump's most impressive skills, not unlike Bill Clinton, is to slip and slide his way out of adversity.  Underneath it may consist of a ruthless, antagonistic, and zealot set of sychophantic lawyers, not unlike those who plotted the murder of John F. Kennedy, but on the surface Donald Trump's smooth melismatic drawl has convinced America to elect him the leader of the free world not once, but twice.  Try to imagine a human being in a jail cell deserving of due process, but instead he is murdered in cold blood by his cell mate to conceal crimes of a high magnitude.  Those in power sanctioned his murder, hired a hit man, and covered up his assassination.  Jeffrey Epstein was an evil man of prominence supported and engaged with other evil men of prominence.  When threatened with exposure he was killed.  It should be chilling to every American that your death could be next. 

The Missing Arts in American Society

 I wear gas permeable hard contact lenses.  They are a vast improvement over the PMMA lenses I received at Duke University Eye Clinic in the early 1980's for Keratoconus.  I am thankful for hard contact lenses, because they are the only solution for the eye disease Keratoconus.  Even after keratoplasty in both eyes (cornea transplants) I have corrected vision of 20/20.  My saga of flying contact lenses continues, and today was no different.  First as I attempted to extract my left lens from its case, it hid from me falling over backwards stuck between the edge of the case and the bathroom countertop.  For a minute I couldn't find it, but when I did feel it with my fingers and attempted to free it from its sticky nest, it decided to commit suicide and broke in half destroying itself.  Innately I new these lenses had made it past their half life.  It was not a huge surprise, but it was yet another inconvenience.  I had one spare left, but it was sitting dried out in its open case.  It took over an hour to finally coax it to settle on my left cornea and attempt to improve my legally blind vision without contact lens correction.  Secondly it felt like a huge dirty diaper in my eye.  My vision was blurred and it felt terrible like it was about to tiddly wink out at any moment.  It stayed in for a few minutes, but as soon as I started to do something productive in the house (rearrange some furniture) it popped out.  I heard it "dink" on my hardwood floor.  I tried not to panic or delve into a chronic depressive state.  Somehow the Creator had mercy on my now weeping eyes, and I placed my finger right on the bit of shiny plastic nestled next to the rocker on my Great Uncle Edwin's chair.  I reflected that these are gas permeable lenses and thus are meant to stay moist.  It had been sitting in a dry container, so I mused that I was to blame for not taking more time to clean and soak the lens before inserting it.  I did so, and it has stayed put so far.  I finished my furniture arranging long enough to realize that age 63 and after Covid repeatedly has racked my body, I no longer was capable of holding a full time job.  I have arthritis on the right side of my body, and recently it has worsened running from my right shoulder down my arm and into my piano playing fingers.  I take a lot of over-the-counter NSAIDs.  If I do not, I am in constant pain.  I have become a "Man of Constant Sorrow," but mentally and spiritually I am not depressed.  My environment does everything in its power to exert depression on me, but I resist.  Music is my salvation, and often I am denied it.  How and why am I denied music, and why would music seem so important?  As a true musician, a real musician, not a poser, or a talker, or a grandstander, but one who has committed to the vocation and art of musical expression, composition, and performance, music becomes part of your soul.  I feel most of us have some music in as at birth, and this has inspired both the Kodaly and Suzuki methods of early music education.  In these methods it is crucial to establish a connection with and understanding of the God's given gift of rhythm, melody, and eventually harmony.  Often it begins with just rhythm, because singing or actualizing pitch or melody is not necessary.  If it comes right down to it, the basic fundamental requirement for music is time.  While the concept of time as an organization of subdivisions of an established pulse or beat has evolved over time, and that development and abstraction can be heard in Jazz's Avant-garde and Classical's Abstract Expressionism or Second Viennese School, the feeling of a pulse, a steady hearbeat-like continuance also becomes synonymous with an emotional feeling.  The tempo of that pulse directly can influence these emotions in an almost crude and primitive way.  Major tonality often is deemed happy and minor sad.  A slow pulse or ballad usually equates to a feeling that is reflective, relaxing, or romantic.  These characterizations are subjective, but throughout history they have remained constant.  Fast paced music or a quick tempo takes more of a certain kind of energy.  The best example could be America's "Rock and Roll," which like every other tenant of music is a study of and unto itself.  I feel this sexualized, physically aggressive, and sometimes euphoric blues-based American popular music represents the impact of time on the human psyche, soul, and libido.  It is called "Groove."  Many will disagree, including Igor Stravinsky, that emotion and music are the same or entangled.  I have found increasingly over time that great musical artists often talk shit or reinforce false or erroneous concepts and ideas.  It is an interesting paradox that a composer as great as Stravinsky, who penned The Firebird, rife with emotional content, would say such a thing.  The same is true of Miles Davis, who touted his genetic lineage as the son of a prominent oral surgeon.  Specifically he said that he never suffered nor had the blues.  There could be no greater contradiction knowing full well that the bulk of Miles' musical output was the direct expression of his own ideas and feelings.  Much of it was pensive and melancholic.  Don't listen to your artists talk.  Listen to them play.  Music, if good, necessarily is intertwined with your soul.  I have discovered upon studying classical music (or more succinctly European orchestral and chamber music), which made its way across the pond, fused with other disparate nationalities, and became its own offering, that this music equally is representative of the human condition as newer American musics including Appalachian Roots Music, the Blues, Bluegrass, Gospel, and Jazz.  We are more familiar with these because they are closer to us.  I have enjoyed listening to the almost local classical radio station, WCPE, and learning from it.  My classical CD collection was stoked by program material on this completely privately funded FM radio station in Wake Forest, North Carolina.  It is unfortunate that even with a dedicated translator on Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville, Fort Bragg and CSX both assault this signal making it pleasing only about 80% of the time.  Upon scrutiny the roof of a diesel/electric heavy haul AC traction locomotive has every conceivable form of wireless communication including cell and WiFi frequencies.  When studied the antenna arrays built by GE were so complex with cross modulation, no results could be discerned.  They were a mish mash of EMF pollution.  Both FM and AM radio and over-the-air television have been sacrificed in lieu of the omnipotent Wireless Internet promulgated by Elon Musk and his Star Link satellite network.  In retrospect the original offerings of radio and television in America were and still are better.  Radio in particular before television evolved connected the nation, and disseminated American Popular Music to the masses, included extremely rural disconnected areas.   Early radio was a rich stew of musics which were meant to provide fulfillment to tattered American souls.  This included Southern preaching, the Blues, Country, and Swing.  The validity of music in the formation of America is strong and important.  It was out voice, and now we have none.  We are being told to what to listen, and this advice is coming from foreign streaming companies who have no place in the music industry.  Big Tech has hijacked American Popular Music for its own gain.  Film, television, and music, all huge components of America's economy, have been neutered.  The outbreak of Covid was nails in their coffins.  It is difficult not to realize the core constructs of American society have been attacked and are a shadow of their former selves.  While inclusive Real TV and social media have had their say, professional industries which provided opportunity, monetary reward, and viable united cultural expression are missing.  The reason it is so difficult for me to pursue the vocation and art of music, is because now it largely is missing in American society.  A few symphony concerts a year is not enough. 

When the Odds Are Against Us

They say those loosing both parents have a fifty percent chance of survival.  The mortality rate for children loosing both parents is fifty percent.  We can discern burying both parents, even if over a long period of time, is taxing to children.  Is it logical to assume children who have grown up, married, and established their on families have an easier time?  I think not.  I would think that children who have had little or negative interaction with their parents, or who have been separated from them, may have an easier time.  It means the emotional anguish all ready has developed, been internalized, and cast its spell over the offspring.  They may hate their parents for various reasons.  It is those children who were reared in a supportive and loving environment who have the most trouble.  It is called loss, and loss comes in several flavors.  When love is involved, no matter how tangible or abstract, it heightens the anguish.  Is it better to have loved and lost than never loved before?  I experienced my first grievous loss when I was in my twenties.  I was spared in adolescence, but I also realized early that you had to work for what you had.  If you wanted a better life and possibly love, it didn't come to you.  You had to pursue it, and it took work.  The equation for love is both complex and simple.  As a society America has lost track of many things, and love is one of them.  We can't even decide our gender, and we have learned to use love as a tool of manipulation.  This is one of the great torches of the American free market.  We learned to exploit humanity for profit, thus we sell love at the highest most achievable price.  Selling love is troublesome and problematic, but selling sex doesn't have to be.  Other nations have figured this out before America, and thus prostitution is legal, regulated, and safe.  It is for adults.  When is the last time we heard the words "adult content."  We, as an American society, no longer know who we are or what are our values.  Solidarity has slipped through our fingers at the polls.  We have been irresponsible in our choices of our elected leaders, and those leaders have forsaken us.  If we don't do the work, behave responsibly, and pay attention to human life, we will perish.  Perhaps we are too busy trying to make ends meet to have much chance to read, think, and observe.  It is no coincidence.  Our government, a malicious and self-centered regime, has aided our naivete.  They have passed and not passed legislation that has harmed us in many ways.  Our economic needs are not being met, nor are our health concerns.  We have been neglected.  Whether we want to admit it or not, America always has been reliant upon our governments.  It has leaned so far that way, that we have become clandestine socialist.  The government provides much for us in many ways.  If the economy was working efficiently and there was economic and social mobility (like there has been at other times in history) we would be more self sufficient.  Society being led by our federal, state, and local governments, must provide this canvas for American life.  It means all people must be involved (solidarity), and classism must be kept to a minimum.  The economic inequality we have allowed because of poor choices at the polls and poor leadership will be the death of American democracy.  We all ready have lost it, because the rich have hijacked America through a weak, subservient, incompetent Congress.  Lobby money has been the fuel for this hijacking.  It is just bribery.  You can have opportunity to provide for yourself, when you reap the benefits of your labors, or someone (a Communist or Socialist regime) can just pay you off.  Most Americans cherish their freedom to earn and mind for themselves.  This anachronistic, autocratic, and totalitarian vision of Donald Trump is so antiquated, harmful, and evil the entire world is cringing in disbelief.  I thought loosing both parents was going to be a challenge, but it pales to what is facing America today.  For me all of it is mixed up together in a house, and because I am a musician.  Musicians must make noise.  In most situations it is considered music and is pleasing, but in the wrong situation when America has been hijacked by fascists, music is the enemy.  It is the metaphor for American freedom.  How did music become arch enemy number one?  In the milieu of Donald Trump's political strategies, disguising real American history is paramount.  It is being called "Cancel Culture," but what it is is disguising or completely eliminating the greatest accomplishments of America.  It is like utterly destroying the West Bank, saying Palestine never existed, and building a resort where lay the smoldering remains of a viable (but possible unpopular) culture.  History is what creates that relevance.  History is and should be the framework for the future.  Wiping out large swaths of culture, people, and countries for personal gain.  What is this sin?  If society is to become compliant in this new reorganization or gentrification, they can't remember.  Understanding, preserving, and promulgating America's achievements is key.  With the total lack of care and nurturing of the American people, and with this newly forged blatant animosity of middle and lower class earners, it will not be long before America returns to slavery.  Jazz was a direct reaction to the freeing of slaves.  Its expression, its honesty, and its exuberance are the enemy of evil, fascist, and self-serving regimes.  That is because all of it is driven by spirituality and the acknowledgment of a Higher Being.  If life on earth all ready is Hell, then there must be a Heaven.  Music, in a nutshell, has become an enemy of the state clandestinely and at the behest of Donald Trump's aspirations.  For that reason, and because he is weak, if music decides to resurrect in a real way for the real reasons, Satan could be defeated.  My fight to mourn the loss of my parents, to continue to function as a musician, and to duck ensuing enslavement has become seemingly insurmountable.  At least it seems like the most difficult fight of my life, because it all comes to fruition at the same time. 

George Orwell Predicted Correctly

Thus far the direct result of Donald Trump's attack on Iran at the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia is inevitably higher gas prices for Americans and three dead soldiers in Kuwait.  "Thank you, Mr. President."  Before this Hegseth sanctioned war game, these soldiers were alive and well.  They were not in combat.  They were just pulling their time at an army base in Kuwait.  Like chess pieces in perverted tournament of power, distraction, and ego, these United States soldiers did nothing to deserve death.  It is called murder.  Upon listening to the Iranian Foreign Minister, he was stupefied that in the midst of what he called successful negotiations, the United States attacked Iran and killed their leader.  He also reiterated that Iran fully had cooperated with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action sought by President Barack Obama.  Trump withdrew the United States from this agreement in 2018 and viciously attacked Iran in February of 2026.  We have yet to know if the governing regime in Venezuela has changed, since Special Forces removed Nicolas Maduro from power.  It is easy to discern why President Trump has proceeded with both military actions.  It is because of their oil.  Both Venezuela and Iran have the largest oil reserves in the world.  It would seem the Bush Cartel influence still highly is active.  President Trump is using nonexistent money to the tune of 40 trillion dollars to fund a military that is engaging in war mongering to aid the wealthy.  Each and every day average Americans wake and rise, another blow is struck by our own President on the shrinking middle class and the growing lower class.  Inflation was not improved nor has any campaign promise been fulfilled since Donald Trump won his second term.  It is the opposite.  He seems to be working for another foreign interest whose goal is to destroy American democracy and her people.  It is not unusual globally to have a murderous tyrant as a president.  We have not seen it in America until now.  The proper procedure to remove corrupt and felonious leaders is what?  If we learn from example a foreign interest either kidnaps the President or bombs the White House killing the current administration.  This is Trump's example.  Trump has suggested that the Iranian populace should rise up and take control of their nation, but they are cowering in fear of bombs.  Sheltered in place and said to continue for a month, the arrangement all ready have been made.  Like in Venezuela, Iran may wallow in chaos publicly, but those who have taken control of these nations' assets have been planned for months if not years.  We never will see who, because Trump's major tool of conquering is controlling America's media.  It is Big Brother, and it is Donald Trump.  George Orwell's novel, "1984," should become a supportive citation of our Constitution.  

Squeezing Water Out of a Rock

I feel the hot air wafting across my face.  Washington Post (neutered) headline.  (How many employees did Bezos lay off?)  "Trump Aids have trouble figuring out how to spend 500 billion dollars on defense."  Evidently our President has no need to be fiscally responsible.  We are not at war, but the defense industry needs and wants a war.  What is the national debt?  If we are in debt  38 TRILLION dollars, then there is no 500 billion dollars.  When Donald Trump became President, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was active.  It is better known as the Iran Nuclear Deal.  This far reaching and in depth treaty limited Iran's enriched uranium in return for the lifting of financial sanctions.  In 2018 Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement leading to Iran exceeding the said limit on uranium enrichment.  Today's headlines in the Washington Post?  The President is considering a military attack on Iran.  They want a war, not peace.  The defense industry makes money from war, but they do not fight the wars.  Wars like Korea, Viet Nam, and the Persian Gulf are fought by our military.  The trade off of dead American soldiers for profit for the defense industry is evil.  The entire electrical grid could be rebuilt with 500 billion dollars.  There would be leftover changed.  In Fayettenam our Country Commissioners give away millions of dollars.  To be exact 30 million dollars for a cancelled performing arts center which now is a dirt mud hole.  A firehouse that sits uncompleted on Bragg Boulevard.  Another 15 million dollars down the drain, because they want to tear it down.  It will not cost 100 million dollars to renovate the Crown Theater and arena, but someone is going to get that money.  I predict it will be Walter Davis' architectural firm.  Those who hold elected positions get to choose where the money is spent.  Let's spend another 500 billion dollars on defense, when they have trouble picking up the trash at Fort Bragg.  I am paying $9.00 for 1.5 liters of California goat milk, because America's milk, beef, poultry, pork, and eggs are below quality standards.  Grocery and energy prices continue to rise, and average people cannot live without them.  Food and energy for heating and cooling, these things we cannot go without, and they know it.  Let's squeeze some spare changed out of rocks, and the rocks are us.  Immobile.  Under duress.  Lack of opportunity or financial advancement, but lets squeeze the people anyway.  

The Ensuing Poverty of America's Middle and Lower Classes

The overt thought in my mind is how Donald Trump is knee capping everyone except the wealthy.  The American plutocracy has emerged, and where is Robin Hood when you need him?  It has become obvious over time those seeking to make a living, not necessarily accrue riches, are being hobbled.  Every time I see another policy change or a new law enacted with nothing but an executive order from the President, the more livid I become.  Here are some examples.  Climate Change, Global Warming, or the "Big Hoax" means the Earth is getting hotter.  Any fool over forty knows this.  I can remember winters in North Carolina, snow skiing, and sledding down the Big Hill on McGougan Road in  Greenwood Homes.  We had seasons back then, and slowly these disparate seasons have melded into a fickle, manic depressive, irrational episodes of diverse weather.  How could any meteorological organization attempt to predict the weather today?  They don't.  They are told the weather by those in charge, and that includes the military.  How else can it be 70 degrees and 100 humidity in the Cape Fear River Basin?  The answer is because of the military.  It is not that Fayetteville is in a depression, the Cape Fear River Valley.  It is because Wilmington hosts Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.  When those huge cargo ships sit running along with the multitude of diesel/electric locomotives, military aircraft, and carbon emissions, it creates a vacuum that consumes the air and replaces it with noxious gases harmful to human health.  That vacuum is what I hate the most, because it is inhuman, living in a vacuum.  Your entire sensory system is rendered moot.  No stimulation for visual, aural, or tactile sensations.  It is not human.  Each time a policy change occurs or a new law is penned by merely an executive order, I fume.  Those who own and operate ski resorts in Western North Carolina, the little guys who toil and create a bit of human magic in the winter, are being screwed.  The entire hemp industry, which as grown exponentially and is a metaphor for the little guys, is on the brink of extinction.  All of the things that made America great by allowing small businesses to survive and enjoy a comfortable but frugal living, are being destroyed.  Only now is it about huge corporate monopolies that once were recognized, regulated, and forced into democratic compliance.  They paid taxes.  We are watching in real time the meat and potatoes of America starve.  It won't be long before everyone but the elite rich will be impoverished.  Many of the movies I watch on DVD from the last four decades acknowledge such a plight.  It is frightening, but worse now it is coming to fruition.  

The Rust Belt

Everyone who grows up in Fayetteville understands Fayettenam.  WE knew the 82nd Airborne was here, and they are training to deploy at short notice anywhere in the world.  That presents a dynamic of its own, but should civilians who live in Fayetteville but don't work at Fort Bragg assimilate the same daily routine?  Is the daily routine of active duty military personnel the same as civilians in the private sector?  The Civil Service (or Deep State) is active at Fort Bragg.  These are civilian employees that work on post.  How do their job requirements compare to active duty soldiers?  I would think it is obvious, that only certain specialized groups within the Civil Service are akin to active duty military.  Over the past few decades the privatization of many governmental functions has been recommended.  This has crept into the United States military, so the Civil Service has melded more with the active duty military.  This includes trainings of all kind.  The trend was lobbied strongly in Washington, and private owners and investors are the ones who benefit.  The Defense Contractor industry was flourishing in Fayetteville before President Biden pulled troops out of Afghanistan.  This "forever" war, promulgated by the Bush Clan, ceased and within weeks rule by the Taliban was restored.  Years of investment to try and change governmental or militaristic rule in the Middle East was rendered moot.  The same thing occurred when American troops left Iraq.  Much of their equipment was left behind and insurgents quickly organized and became ISIS or ISIL.  They began to use our own fighting equipment against us.  The wisdom in retrospect would have been to listen to Osama Bin Laden.  Only he asked that the foreigners get out of their countries, but the oil was to valuable and important to the Bush family.  Bin Laden offered his services to Saudi Arabia, and the royals declined his help.  This and bitter memories of the invading Americans began Arabic terrorism against the United States.  The lower Saudi royals were the ones responsible for the 9/11 attacks.  The United States has a disturbing history of creating conflict under false pretenses, especially in the Middle East.  The Viet Nam War was such an event.  Very specific contingencies of people wanted this war, and only was it for their personal financial gain.  The Defense Industry as a whole is the backbone of this atrocity creating conflict to sell their weapons.  How many healthy American boys and men were slaughtered in Viet Nam to sell Bell Helicopters?  Many Americans do not have the stomach to understand this evil, and they deny such history, because it interferes with their love of America.  This love really is a love for what America has represented since her inception, an escape from rule by a monarch.  Religious freedom was a major part of America's emerging philosophy.  Immigrants came to the New World so they could worship the God of their choice in the way they chose.  Robber Barons always have been a crucial fabric in the tapestry of America, and common citizens learned to respect the ruling clans because they recognized and supported average citizens.  Without these average working citizens, a Free Market where laborers are paid for their services, quickly we would revert to any of the other forms of economy and government including Communism.  Socialism bluntly never had a chance because of the greed of those in power.  What is happening today with the Trump Regime is no different.  It should be brutally apparent that our current elected leaders are seditious traitors and care not for the majority of the American people.  It is because this Free Market system all ready has been converted to a combination of Totalitarianism and Kleptocracy.  Our leaders, including Donald Trump, are stealing from the people, because to them the people don't matter.  The oligarchs in control have all of the money, so there is no need for the people, a Free Market, or sharing of their wealth.  They have amassed so much fortune in the last few decades the system for accruing this wealth no longer is needed.  We are alarmingly close having regressed backwards to a feudal system.  Any of these forms of government are the antithesis of America and what our founding fathers created in the United States Constitution.  We, as a nation, accepted the ruling clans who built America and their own personal fortunes.  I do not think it could be said these prominent families were contemptuous of the immigrant population of America.  Instead they knew they were the key to their fortunes providing goods and services in a new nation of freedom and opportunity.  This was Capitalism at its best, and America has seen it ebb and flow.  Today we are at a low point on every front.  We don't produce quality products.  Instead we produce the most cheaply made product and sell it at a great profit.  This includes beef, cow's milk, eggs, chicken, and pork.  Whose idea was it to pay American farmers NOT to produce fresh healthy food?  They were and are destroyers of America.  We have no real products, factories, or GNP.  We import most of our products from India and Asia with their cheap labor.  Would it not be possible again to invigorate these traditional industries like steel, timber, furniture, textiles, and agriculture?  The answer is no because those money movers on Wall Street also don't care about Americans.  Only do they want to exploit our economy as best and quickly as possible.  I am sure that many of these oligarchs now are of foreign origin.  A President who only knows how to build gilded ballrooms, golf clubs and hotels for the rich is misplaced.  It is time to oust this regime.  If we adhere to the same methodology they are using, it will mean civil or revolutionary revolt.  Congress, as it were, is not capable of discarding this joke administration. 

The Conundrum of the Flying Contact Lens

 It has been a strenuous week and rife with irony which in good faith could be construed as levity.  Firstly my musician friend acquired a second Hammond organ.  While I knew he had purchased some Hammond oil to lubricate the tone generator (which is similar to sewing machine oil),  he asked me to bring some over.  I had a little jar of this oil which got transferred out of its original white plastic bottle.  Even with its conical squirt top, to get to the oiling cups of a Hammond tone generator you must use an eye dropper or extension tube.  I remembered I had discovered several vessels of sewing machine oil while cleaning out my mother's room.  Now was the time to consolidate.  One was a tin of Singer oil, green and golden, covered in sludge.  The other was a white hard plastic small bottle that apparently had not been opened.  I had to snip off the tip of the squirt nozzle.  Squeezing the metal tin was not a problem, and it only took a minute or so to empty its contents into my little jar.  As I began to squeeze the rigid white bottle to get oil to come out, in a matter of a few seconds it decided otherwise.  My workbench, my hands, and my face became covered in oil as the bottle exploded.  Luckily I closed my eyes in time, but oil did get onto my contact lenses, and they proceeded to fog up.  This was the only casualty, but I did have to take one out and clean it.  Cleaning and inserting gas permeable hard contact lenses can be a challenge.  Since the Covid outbreak and a two year stint of infected eyes because of these said contact lenses, now I soak them in a diluted bleach solution as suggested by my ophthalmologist at Duke University, now retired Dr. Petrowski.  I only saw him a few times, but he was the most forthright and helpful eye doctor ever I have had.  Soaking the contacts overnight in this diluted solution kills the bacteria, fugus, or viruses, but also it removes the color tint from the lenses making them transparent.  The reason why they tint the lenses is for ease of use.  Having them clear makes cleaning and inserting them more difficult, and I have to be careful not to lose one.  It is the luck of the draw.  Usually one will fall off the tip of my index finger and land in the sink which is closed and full of water.  It only takes a few minutes to find the lens, although it likes to hide suctioned to the wall of the sink or the metal drain.  After receiving a text saying this Apple Macbook Pro was ready for pick up, I was putting in my contacts.  As the first contact balanced on the tip of my index finger, and it was filled with conditioning solution, suddenly the weight of the fluid (which evidently was too much) caused the contact to fall backward off the cliff of my finger.  My hand is raised in the air in front of the mirror like a doctor beginning to don a surgical glove.  Almost always the lens falls straight down into the sink, and I can either hear or see it.  This time the lens disappeared into thin air.  The games began, and they were Olympian.  Thirty minutes later no lens.  As I have learned in the past you need to be able to see to find a contact lens, and this is contradictory.  You have yet to put them in your eyes.  I have learned to put in my one spare to aid the searching process.  This I did, and the stored lens was caked in dried solution.  I cleaned it carefully trying not to disturb the sink full of water.  I spent an hour with a flashlight scouring the sink top, each bottle, the wall, the floor and the mirror.  There was no lens.  I decided to defer the search to a later date knowing that the lens could not have vanished into thin air.  It was not until hours later after Hooters chicken wings unpleasantly carved a tunnel through my intestines and into my rectum creating the quintessential ass fire, I told myself, "What is the one place you have not looked?"  The answer?  The toothbrush holder on the wall made of ceramic with six cutouts for such utensils. Could it be possible this small plastic lens could have teleported itself a foot and a half through the air full of liquid to this location?  It was the only place I had not looked.  It was on!  I looked, and there I saw the glimmer of a reflective piece of plastic lodged quietly and comfortably in the right second hole.  I fetched a Q tip swab and gently lifted it out.  I'm saved!!!

At the Expense of the Rail Industry, Human Obsolescence

 It is pointless trying to talk about the dangers of too much rail activity to any local, like it is pointless to try to convince a MAGA warrior Trump is not for him.  He is exploiting you, but in a sad and twisted perspective, the followers want his attention.  They have nothing else.  If his appearance, charisma and stump are in the ballpark of the discarded, unguided, but faithful minions, Trump becomes God.  The world has experienced this before like many things.  Unless we consciously look back, seek out, and study history, we won't know these things.  With the huge decline in support for public education (which is a conscious attempt to dumb down the population), most average American citizens don't know much of anything.  They don't follow the news, read, or question what is tossed at us.  That which was there in front of us on television, in newspapers, and to a small extent on Am radio, has dissipated.  It is startling to say the least.  For me it began with the eradication of God in media.  Today we use "media" as a broad term for internet activity, which is becoming Big Brother.  Traditional American media is all but gone meaning print media.  Magazines.  Weekly rags.  Newspapers.  Once in America these were a core component of our daily lives.  Then Time magazine declared its war on God, and over time the mainstream has become alienated.  It has been purposeful, and in the last few months as Epstein files rain down on Washington, distraction and the dissemination of false information are rampant on the internet.  To find the truth one must work at it.  Life in America has turned tribal.  There is very little perspective, historical reference, or wisdom.  It truly has become dog eat dog.  If I criticize the rail industry as a whole, those working for it will react negatively.  Ironically the amount of workers they employ at local levels has dwindled much like other corporations.  AI has threatened to lay off large swaths of America's work force, but tests of AI show it is not capable of building a product.  The most efficient method of building products is in factories with an assembly line, which could be partly or fully automated.  When we find and peruse old documentary footage of these factories in America's heyday, we should be amazed.  How can there be any greater technology than one of these complex assembly lines producing consumer-wanted products.  America has become just a weak and lazy poser.  We move money around on Wall Street, trade what is left of companies, and create investment capital bubbles.  We as a nation bear no resemblance to what we were, what built us, and who that was.  We were tough fiery, rebellious hellions with a taste for freedom and happiness.  Now we suck on the teat of the internet.  Covid did not help.  It should be clear that Donald Trump is not for America or her people.  It is a lie.  Everything he has done has hurt ordinary people.  It should be starkly clear he is on and for the other team, and they have been trying to disassemble America and her methodology for some time from within.  Like a great cult leader with deception and cunning, he has coerced a constituency to follow him.  In probably the most grievous and heinous American act, they reelected him to the United States Presidency a second time.  Now the shit has hit the fan.  What does this have to do with the rail industry as a whole?  First understand that in the 1980's freight rail was almost bankrupt, and tractor trailers and their drivers were flourishing.  They were carrying the freight.  Today the railroads to move coal, inasmuch as coal is a controversial source of energy.  The Trump Administration in one short year has wreaked havoc on America and her people eliminating protective regulatory agencies and their rules to protect us.  The most recent, which was in the last week, was the complete and total abandonment of any environmental  awareness and responsibility to preserve and save mother Earth.  They will exploit the earth until we are dead.  Only someone who lives in their own lifetime is capable of such irresponsible behavior devoid of any spirituality, respect for our planet, or God.  Nothing is important except for what I am feeling right now.  It is difficult to imagine any human being this devoid of empathy including children.  Born with a pristine pallet of emotional and intellectual potential, and a hefty percentage of inherited DNA from their bloodline, beings with no souls are an extreme anomaly.  They are modern day zombies, and I am beginning to believe that the majority of who I see each day are suffering from this ill.  Without a support system of some kind provided by our nation's leadership at the federal, state, and local levels we don't have a chance.  Again what does this have to do with the rail industry?  At my own personal expense I will reiterate why.  There is no other corporate entity that has the power to affect our lives more directly than rail.  A close second would be the commercial airline industry.  It should be obvious the reasons why.  In a now trite and anachronistic way, the Iron Horse did build America.  We must and do have a reverence for the railroads and their expansion westward across America.  The "Transcontinental Railroad" was a watershed event in America's history.  Likewise the steam locomotive and its importance in the everyday lives of Americans spawned entire genres of American Popular Music.  More than one you say?  Like the trot and gallop of horses, our primary mode of transportation before the internal combustion engine, the lifestyle which developed around train travel largely created American Roots Music and influenced the Blues.  Without that sound and rhythm America would not be the same.  In the 1960's though the transformation to diesel had different effects.  I contend that this change from the sentimental sounds of steam to the knock and roar of diesel directly affected American Popular Music.  Its cousin was Lyndon Johnson's War in Viet Nam.  Stir in the Civil Rights Movement and America became more emboldened, assertive, and loud.  Older American music could not compete sonically and acoustically with the sounds of war driven largely by diesel machines.  Amplification took the place of more quiet intimate venues as the fight for American Civil rights spread to the masses and thus stadiums.  In assessing America's current rail system, the "Spaghetti Bowl," the term Precision Scheduling Railroading necessarily presents itself.  A product of Canadian rail tycoon Hunter Harrison who transformed their rail into a viable profit yielding Fortune 500 entity, CSX was smitten.  His hiring single handedly drove up stock values before he died shortly thereafter.  Nothing much as changed and the company has continued unabated.  From a citizen's perspective it is easy enough to perceive changes in their operation, the major north/south East Coast railroad.  It is not good.  Since 2016, Trump's first presidency, the quality of life in America has declined sharply.   It has declined from increased rail activity.  In a nutshell Amazon's wealth and success is contingent upon intermodal container shipping provided by CSX and other Class A railroads.  It is long omnipresent freight trains that are delivering your packages and wreaking havoc on the everyday lives of Americans.  Even discounting the heinous accidents such as the Lac-Megantic rail disaster in Quebec and the East Palestine derailment in Ohio, the daily operation of freight trains has escalated since 1990 when John Snow created CSX-T.  To cut to the chase General Electric and General Motors embraced AC traction as a graven image using the Hewlett Packard computer to control electronics in newer locomotives.  Traction motors were changed from direct current to alternating current, and the beast was born.  The ramifications of this change have not been recognized or studied as a source of human pathology.  Instead as America began to decline because of the exponential rise in human disease and ailments including Restless Leg Syndrome, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and more, we as a population have not recovered.  The outbreak of Covid 19 hammered nails in our coffins.  While Donald Trump's nefarious policies are our current challenge to resurrect democracy, without a change in rail regulations, the health and well being of average Americans will continue to decline.  There is substance in the adage of living on the wrong side of the tracks, and the highest incidence of prostate cancer in men in Rocky Mount, North Carolina is not an accident.  It is because one of CSX's largest freight yards resides here.  People and freight rail are not compatible, and if things continue as they are rail will win.  The human being will become obsolete. 

The Shitstorm of American Life

 Ironically I have not blogged much, because the machine I use was damaged by a pulsed energy weapon.  More likely it was static electricity in the air, and there has been much lately.  It could have been that the Magsafe charging port in my Apple Macbook Pro computer just bit the dust.  It was a refurbished unit, Mid 2012, but Affordamac was in full swing when I bought it.  It had a new Seagate hard drive and upgraded components, the most important of which was the Nvidia graphics chip.  My previous Macbook Pro was only a year apart, but it used a Radeon chip.  They fail!  I saw the strong blue arc when I plugged in the Magsafe charger.  I was not careful about it either.  It is magnetized, so you just get the plug in close proximity to the Mac's internal port and it seats itself like magic.  It is highly likely the little pins in either the socket or the charging port were bent, worn out, or loose.  I expected to have an issue with this computer in the near future, and this was it.  You are never prepared.  I will spare the details, but repairing and out-of-date Apple is a challenge.  Apple is not the company it once was.  You must find a dedicated PCB technician who can solder on computer circuit boards.  My first attempt produced a working computer at the cost of a new upgraded 140 watt charging brick and a USB-C to Magsafe 1 adapter.  This is what the repair technician suggested.  It worked for one week sitting on my coffee table, and I used it to listen to my extensive music collection.  The laptop computer has revolutionized the world, and if we stopped to count the many things it will do, living without a computer would suck.  It would also undermine the American economy, except that laptop computers magically have been shrunk to the size of ipods and cellular phones.  The tool of choice for most everyone today is this "Smart Phone."  Never was I a fan of this little device.  The first cell phones I had were a joke, and my identity was stolen with the purchase of my first Samsung flip phone.  The Nokia was better, but it needed a headset.  My sister insisted I buy my aging mother an iPhone, and I did.  She loved it, and it took me many hours of work to transfer her contact list and other data.  Only a few months ago I resurrected that exact phone and found a new more cost effective mobile carrier.  Interestingly I use it to text more than anything.  My second attempt at having my Macbook Pro repaired was successful, and only because I did most of the research myself on the internet from my other Apple computer.  Actually it also was my mother's computer, an iMac I bought for her when her Dell failed.  Also many hours transferring her pictures from that computer to the iMac.  Once they were there, she never looked at them again.  I still use this computer for business, and it functions well.  As it turns out when a Magsafe charging port burns it damages several protective circuits on the logic board including a fuse and eventually, as we discovered, a resistor tasked with "handshaking" the CMS to the charger itself.  It took several passes and two different repair shops to get to the bottom of this.  It was my information that helped the second tech isolate the remaining problem quickly in one day.  Needless to say it was a month of neurosis, worry about never finding another laptop that would serve my needs, and money.  It is interesting popular trends, and they do not always serve the professional community.  I use external webcams and audio interfaces to make music videos of myself playing a variety of instruments, so this computer is important to my work flow.  It would be difficult to drag a Mac Pro tower computer and a large monitor to different locations in the house.  (although you could with some effort)  The Apple Macbook Pro is a marvelous and useful tool for many things, and this is my first test of the new repair.  "Will the green light come on?"  Rest assured I have taken pains to be careful in the future about charging this laptop, which includes as close as the consumer can get to power conditioning.  A  home this is my age, 63, does not have 3 wire grounded receptacles, nor does it have the third ground wire installed in the junction boxes.  I have replaced many of these aging receptacles, and ironically and to my fault, this laptop was not plugged into one of the new ones.  The reason was other equipment was monopolizing the newer outlets including recording equipment for my Knabe grand piano and my DVD player and screen.  The Macbook Pro somehow took second status and was plugged into a normal outlet.  If there had been a ground wire, the static charge may have been sent to this ground harmlessly into the earth.  Immediately I bought my upteenth Furman "power conditioner," and it was a Series 2 which is the more expensive model with better filtering.  The repaired laptop now is getting as clean power as I can provide without spending thousands installing a 3 wire grounded system in the house.  The components that were damaged were the charging port itself, or "DC in board," the MOSFETS, a fuse, and a resistor.  They were replaced in that order with an ascending order of repair.  I also spent $50.00 on the new 140 watt charger which now is unnecessary, and I am afraid to use it.  In the meantime the battery got changed twice.  It is plausible that a "Pulsed Energy Weapon" could cause such damage, but most likely if you were targeted with such, it would fry everything.  America is in denial and headed down the wrong path for various reasons.  The first is obvious.  Donald Trump is trying his best to implement a Communist fascist system in America.  This is a system where an all powerful government and its oligarchs control everything.  They own everything, provide everything, and expect your allegiance to "The Party."  In these systems the people are secondary and neglected.  In the most dire cases in history we see what happens when a deranged dictator is allowed to progress.  Nations devolve in civil war and eventually mass murder of the people by the government.  We have seen these autocrats in our lifetimes including Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Bashar al-Assad.  The sole directive of indoctrinating and exploiting the common people continues.  It is the services of the people, for the people that are being exploited, stolen, and embezzled in full view with no remorse.  This is Donald  Trump.  One only has to look at the mockery of the North Carolina Education lottery to see the metaphor.  Giving away hundreds of millions of dollars to an often uneducated common person, instead to allocating that equally and efficiently to the populace.  This is what it has come to be about.  No part of the lottery in North Carolina is going to education, unless a powerful, wealthy, and persuasive elite demands it. The majority of this money goes directly into the statehouse and into the hands of Phil Berger and his band of thieves.  Still we do not have a state budget, and they can't decide whether to rescind the Medicaid Expansion Program.  Depriving millions of North Carolinians of healthcare they all ready have it not in their political favor.  At least outgoing Senator Thom Tillis has been outspoken about this.  The continual rise of prices for everything soon will complete the decimation of America's middle class.  The traditional America economy, while at times has worked, all ready has been transformed into a huge federal govermental slush fund.  The tariffs Trump has placed on imported goods is collected by the Department of Homeland Security.  It is cash in hand, and there is no accountability for this immense monthly revenue.  With all of this uncertainty, there is one certainty.  No data center or AI complex will run without electricity.  If a huge Pulsed Energy Weapon is used, it will wipe out the power grid, and Americans will be left to fend for themselves.  This is a stark realization, but it is realistic.  It should give us perspective on AI and its need.  It will not be long before we will have a food shortage.  The herding of illegal aliens, working or not, has hobbled the food industry and the availability of quality groceries.  The problem is if President Trump is impeached or removed from office, his replacement is worse.  Pete Hegseth is in hiding, and the clown of an Attorney General puts Bill Barr to shame.  It's hard to believe through what we are living.