I find myself just shaking my head a lot. This country seems to have lost it’s collective mind. Utah officials have approved a data center twice the size of Manhattan! According to ‘The Guardian,’ The Stratos artificial intelligence data center footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites. The facility will require about 9GW of power – that’s more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes. Oh, and it will suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.

Shall we define “significant amount of water?” How does 16.6 billion gallons each year sound? I’d say “significant.” To be clear, that’s all the data centers in Utah, not just this new one. Still, local residents are already being told to conserve water because there isn’t enough. The Great Salt Lake is literally drying up, and someone thinks that’s the perfect spot for a water intensive industry? That’s straight up insane.

In fairness to the data centers, they are trying to use less. The newer facilities are switching to closed-loop water cooling systems to reduce usage. The downside is, the closed systems use more electricity to operate and the increased electricity demand means more water usage by the power company so they’re not so much fixing the problem as shifting the problem.

Oh, did I write ‘problem?’ The companies that benefit from the data centers don’t see any real problem. They’re just sure some solution will make itself known over time. Republican (of course) Governor Spencer Cox is all gung-ho on the project as well, citing (this is true) desalinization plants as the long-term possible solution to the water problem. No word on where landlocked Utah is supposed to get it’s ocean to desalinate.

No matter how hard conservatives try, magical thinking will not overcome reality. We can’t wish away or simply ignore problems. It’s brain-dead foolish to insist that some future, unknown (keyword: unknown) solution will magically appear and keep plowing forward. Long-term, it’s not even good business. Investing billions of dollars in a “maybe we’ll figure it out” kind of way seems reckless.

This unfettered Capitalism is making a small handful of people magnificently rich and doing untold – and likely irreparable – damage to the vast majority of us. The ‘Idiocracy’ is in full bloom, here in the United States and, if the news is any indicator, around the world. In fact, it looks to me like anywhere conservatism is taking root, Idiocracy is also on full display. I used to have more faith in humanity than I do now…

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Oh, look! Yet another promise made, promise broken. 47 was going to eliminate inflation, remember? That was his promise. Has he done that, or has MAGA started offering excuses why it was, oh, I don’t know, President Eisenhower’s fault? These guys aren’t particular about who they blame, just so long as they don’t blame the guy who is actually responsible.

It’s driven by the clever trap he sprung on himself – completely unsuspecting, by the way – when he decided to choke off the world’s oil supply by attacking Iran. Many people – big people, strong people – were saying, “Don’t do it. It would be a dumb plan, the dumbest plan,” but he did it. Other Presidents were too smart to get caught in that snare but Donny did it. Donny did it.

Oh, AND, according to him, he doesn’t care about your financial problems. His words: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. Not even a little bit.” His focus is on making sure Iran doesn’t build the nuclear bomb they swore off as contrary to Islam in 2004. So you’re paying a higher and higher price so he can keep Iran from building the bomb they unilaterally chose not to build 22 years ago.

Wages haven’t risen at the same rate. We fall a little further behind every day. We’re like the frog in the pot of water. We haven’t perceived the temperature yet but when we do, it will be too late…

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Speaking of frogs, Donny is about to get his toady in as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The guy got confirmed by insisting he would be independent. Then he ran to Donny and said, “Duh, I told ’em what you said to tell ’em, boss. Duh, gee, boss, they actually bought it, boss!”

The Fed is (was) an important support for the American dollar. Making it subject to the whims of a moronic madman isn’t a good idea in any way…

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It looks like Democrats are getting ready to fall into their standard campaign issue: “We’re not Donald Trump.” It’s not enough. I think they should highlight HOW they’re not Donald Trump. Rather than just rip 47, they should specify what they’ll do differently. We all know the wreckage the Drumpfster is inflicting on the nation. All the Dems have to do is describe, essentially, the opposite.

It’s not that I disagree with pointing out the problems with the opposition. I just don’t think it’s enough. You’ve got to have a vision, too. You need a plan, something for the team to get behind. You need more on offer than just, “We’re not that guy…”

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47 seems to actually believe that the world will just accept whatever garbage he spews as true and correct. Nobody does, of course. MAGA pretends to, but even they know he’s full of, um, falsehoods. For example, it doesn’t matter how high the cost of his (originally) $200 million dollar ballroom balloons, and it doesn’t matter how many delays occur because of all of the legal violations he’s piling up in just plowing forward, the ballroom is always under budget and on time, no “ahead of schedule.”

The last time he made that ridiculous claim a reporter asked him about it, pointing out that the cost has risen from $200 million dollars to a billion dollars, now. Donny responded with his standard decorum. “I’ve doubled the size of it, you dumb person. Doubled the size. You are not a smart person.” She seemed pretty smart, to me. Design changes add cost, busting budgets. He tried to prosecute Jerome Powell for the same thing, design changes leading to increased costs.

There was only one “dumb person” in that exchange – and it wasn’t the reporter…

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Hey, is now a good time to remind you that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were best friends and likely co-conspirators in a sex trafficking scheme for years and years? He wants people to forget that. People are not forgetting that. Don’t you forget that…