Whew. This is one of those days when it’s very, very good that the stock market is not the economy. The Dow plunged 1,800 points on Thursday and another 237 points on Friday. Official word is that a good jobs report means there won’t be any interest rate cuts any time soon. I tend to doubt the official stories. Corporations have been on a roll since 47 took office, gouging hell out of their customers. Now that the Dems are coming back, corporations will, likely, have to stop doing that so much.

More importantly, the Artificial Intelligence boom has been making great – and greatly dangerous – strides with no government intervention or oversight. Theses AI data centers were very likely to go forward with little to no intervention from the government. Locals are a different story, but the government wasn’t going to be a problem. Then the bought-and-paid-for Republicans got swept aside in an historic election. Now? Likely oversight. Likely controls. Likely, the AI data centers don’t move forward quite so easily. I suspect that has FAR more to do with the impending oversight than the jobs report…

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I think his focus has been wrong for a long time, but ever since the mid-terms, The Drumpfster has thrown himself into his work. No, not his job, don’t be ridiculous. His design work. I think he’s terrible at it. I mean, really terrible, but he seems to love it. He certainly loves doing that far more than he cares about doing his actual job. Now that he’s made his horrific and gaudy changes to the White House, he’s trying to sign a proclamation declaring future changes off limits.

Ironic, isn’t it? NOW he thinks the White House is a landmark and he doesn’t want anybody to do to it what HE did to it – just when it most needs someone to do something. More accurately, he doesn’t want anybody to UNDO what he did to it. He wants his proclamation to ensure that the West Wing rooms would not be “touched by anybody, destroyed, ripped down by stupid people, in order to build something in a slightly different shape. I just thought it was very important that nobody be allowed to come and take it down and try and do something with it,” he said.

Yeah, Dumbass, that’s how WE all felt about the East Wing and, frankly, I MUCH preferred the Oval Office without all the gold-painted baubles glued to the walls. It doesn’t look “real classy-like.” It looks garish. Specifically, it’s what a tacky person thinks classy looks like. Do you know he has spent at least $1.6 billion of our tax dollars on his fever dream renovations? And now he means to force every subsequent President to work in that environment, so he signed a proclamation. Fortunately, future Presidents can sign proclamations, too…

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It looks at though production of the Tesla Cybertruck is coming to an end. You know the Cybertruck. They look like self-propelled dumpsters and they’re rolling crematoriums, as likely to lock you inside the burning vehicle in an accident as get you from point A to point B. AND, you get to pay six figures just to be thought a douche by all of your neighbors and anybody else who ever sees you driving one. Good riddance…

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On Thursday, Governor Gavin Newsom, in one of his final acts as Governor, commuted the death sentences of 548 people in California to life sentences without parole. Meanwhile, Floriduh, Alabama, and Indiana each killed someone on the same day. Quite the contrast…

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It looks like the shock of his stunning rebuke is passing and his natural, basic tendencies are about to come out all over everybody. Trump is nothing but anger and revenge and I suspect he’s eager to show us what punishment we deserve for voting against him. To that end, he has removed Susie Wiles, his Chief of Staff and replaced her with Stephen Miller, the Nosferatu of our time. Apparently, nobody but the Dumbass (and a few MAGA) likes that choice.

Miller gets the blame for creating the immigration mess. He’s also an author of Project 2025, which has proved to be a national blueprint for treason. You would not be surprised to hear that the Democrats have blasted the move, nor that the few remaining MAGA think it’s a great idea. You might be MORE surprised to hear that many Republicans think it’s yet another in a long line of dangerously bad moves.

Things are going to get ugly with Miller as Chief of Staff. There will be no voices for restraint, however mild, remaining. That part is definitely going to suck. On the other hand, with no restraint, it’s most likely we’ll see the true Trump – the deeply corrupted, deeply furious, deeply, deeply damaged Trump – in the upcoming months. Even MAGA might not be able to ignore all of that.

But even with Team Evil becoming Team More Evil, the Democrats finally have the power to interfere with his program and I suspect they’ll use it. At this point, I don’t think they plan to impeach Trump, and they don’t have the votes to do it. They would need some Republicans to cross the aisle. But as Team More Evil gets rolling, some Republicans might well agree the need is real…

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I read a story this morning about a woman named Carolyn Marvin. She’s a semi-retired professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania. Like me, she has concerns about the rapid, seemingly unrestrained rollout of Artificial Intelligence (AI). She expresses her concerns by standing in front of food delivery robots to disrupt their deliveries in Philadelphia. It’s something of an avocation for her.

I’m not sure how to feel about that. It’s a protest against AI. I’m okay with protesting, but I don’t understand the protest. I’m not sure what it accomplishes except that somebody, somewhere, is left wondering where their lunch is. By the time she gets out of the way and the food shows up, it’s cold.

I guess it’s about job loss. If a robot delivers your food, a human doesn’t. The human was getting paid. The robot does not. It’s something of a Luddite movement. The Luddites were a 19th century protest against at-the-time modern machinery that was taking people’s jobs. The word has since become synonymous with people who aren’t comfortable with modern technology, but at the time, the Luddites broke up the machines they despised.

The machines took hold anyway. Some “advances” just can’t be stopped. I suspect automated food delivery is one of those. People keep acting surprised as we find other, new areas where AI and robotics are putting people out of work. Low paid, menial tasks are the low-hanging fruit of the work world but as AI replaces white collar jobs – like what’s happening at Microsuck with 20,000 jobs right now – people are starting to take notice with a bit more focus.

In some cases, jobs nobody has even conceived of yet will show up. Robot repairman, anyone? In most cases, more and more people are going to be idled. Do you know what makes up a national economy? It sure as shootin’ ain’t the Dow. In simplest terms, it’s your spending and mine. My spending is your income and vice-versa. As more and more workers are idled due to AI and robotics, who’s left to spend? What will that mean to the economy?

Professor Marvin is having a private little battle against that circling-of-the-drain failure but she’s going to lose. People will embrace the convenience and won’t much care about HOW the food is delivered. But for now, it’s kind of fun to see her standing in front of the robots, blocking their paths…