I know MAGA doesn’t get it. They just LOVE his shtick and they don’t care that he’s pretending about anything/everything. They actually believe he’s authentic. (<shakes head> Cult members…) But these days, when I see Trump at one of his rallies, he doesn’t seem to have anything of value to say. It’s all just whining and complaining, threatening and terrorizing, and bitch, bitch, bitch about his crowds. OMG, what IS it with him and crowds?

Have you ever noticed the people standing behind Trump at any of his rallies? Recently, they’ve been catching my eye for a weird reason. They are often in costume. I don’t mean they’re dressed up as Count Dracula or even decked out head to toe in Trump apparel but they appear behind Trump wearing hard hats and construction safety vests or some such? Really?

Are we really NOT supposed to notice that underneath those safety vests the people are wearing clothes decidedly NOT appropriate to construction work? Are we really supposed to believe those people just walked off the construction job – in their good clothes – to wander in to a Trump rally? I’ve heard those people are paid, anyway, so I guess dressing them up is just part of the job, like waving the signs…

He’s STILL obsessing over Kamala’s comment about people leaving his rallies, too. He claims, simultaneously, that the people leaving won’t get to take pictures with him AND that people don’t leave his rallies. “The people that you see leaving… because nobody ever leaves. And when they do, I finish up quick, believe me.” I mean, that’s both sides. Nobody leaves and when they do? Sounds like people leave.

And of COURSE people leave. Hundreds or thousands of people at a rally and nobody leaves? Nobody misjudges the time spent or plans for delays? I’ll tell you what, people save for Disneyland and then one of the kids vomits on Mickey’s shoes and they…what? That’s right, they leave. Right? Things happen. Just because people are leaving doesn’t mean they’re tired of Trump. But all the left has to do is pretend it’s because they’re tired of Trump and he can’t think of anything else. THAT, my friends, is one deeply damaged and fragile ego…

I also get a kick out of listening to him brag about talking without using a teleprompter – while standing in front of a teleprompter. He has one. He uses it. And when he doesn’t, he rambles like an insane person. He starts in with “I don’t need a teleprompter and windmills cause cancer and people eat pets and the world is in such bad shape you’re all already dead and only I can save you and isn’t the world mean to poor little me?” and his team is in back, cringing, shaking their heads, and saying to each other, “This was supposed to be a speech on the economy…”

I know that when MAGA watches him at a rally, they see something different than what the rest of the world sees. To quote Paul Simon, “A man sees what he wants to see and he disregards the rest (hmmm)” I’m a musician. I can’t leave out the “hmmm.” These days, he reminds me of the crazy person at the end of the movie who can’t hide it anymore and everyone finally sees. He’s like the Captain Queeg of American politics and the whole world is watching him melt down. Except MAGA. They just think he’s pretty…

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Look, the stock market is NOT the economy, but the 32nd record close of the Dow this year? Somebody is making money somewhere, right? Trump seems to think the Fed dropping the interest rate by a half point means the economy is struggling. As is usually the case among MAGA, it means exactly the opposite.

The economy was humming along strongly. TOO strongly. Eventually, that can lead to some serious problems – like inflation, so the Fed steps in and raises interest rates. It gets most of us to lay off the credit cards for awhile, slowing inflation. When things slow down just a bit, the rates start coming down again. But make no mistake, rates are coming down these days because of the strong position our economy is in, not because it’s struggling. (And please don’t tell me it’s not perfect. No doubt, and I agree, it’s not perfect. But I’m not interested in letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and I’ll take ‘strong, if not perfect…’)

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Oh, sure. What could go wrong? I hear “they” want to open Three Mile Island again. If you’re my age (or thereabouts), you’re thinking, “WHAT?!?” Yeah, me, too. You’ll be happy to know they aren’t trying to re-open the reactor that melted down. I mean, it melted down. It ain’t starting again. But they had two reactors at Three Mile Island and the other one just kept humming along until 2019, when they finally shuttered the plant.

Now they want to open it again – for one customer. That ONE reactor that can still work at Three Mile Island? That can produce 800 Megawatts of energy! 800 Megawatts is enough to power something like 800,000 homes. And they want to fire it back up and sell the power to one company. One. And guess who it is? Microsoft, of course.

The story is, it’s power for the future of AI. Would we be surprised to find, eventually, it was also power to “mine” bitcoin? I don’t know if you know this, but mining bitcoin takes MASSIVE amounts of electricity. The practice is horrible for the environment as it causes power plants to have to spew carbon into the atmosphere. So, at least a nuclear power source eliminates that threat.

Now all we have to worry about is a nuclear power plant built 50 years ago by the lowest bidder with a history of only one partial meltdown so…

The partial meltdown happened in Unit 2. Unit 2 went online December 30, 1978 and melted down March 28, 1979. Hey, they got three months out of it before it became the worst nuclear disaster in US history so, I’m feeling pretty good about, um, the fact that Three Mile Island is in Pennsylvania and I live in California…